


The Angel of Fire

by Marcus_S_Lazarus



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Supergirl (TV 2015), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angel of Fire from Peter David's run, Gen, Post-Crisis on Infinite Earths (CW DC TV Universe) (Epilogue only), Post-Elseworlds Crossover Event (CW DC TV Universe)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23635633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marcus_S_Lazarus/pseuds/Marcus_S_Lazarus
Summary: A decision to look up an unconventional brief ally leads to Barry joining the crew of the Waverider as their latest search for a supernatural fugitive. As a result, the Flash becomes part of a confrontation with a very unconventional magical creature, with an unexpected link to one of Barry’s greatest friends
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25





	1. Doppelganger in Peril

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Timeline-wise, for Barry and the Legends this occurs shortly after 'Elseworlds' and 'Legends of To-Meow-Meow', before their current enemy's efforts began to define their actions and made it impractical for them to be doing anything else.
> 
> AN 2: For the record, I also include a few elements from the comics that haven't appeared directly in the show yet, but I trust you'll enjoy the results anyway.

When the idea first came to him, Barry had no idea why he hadn't thought of doing something like this earlier.

He appreciated that he might have just been put off by the fact that he'd failed to find any record of himself, Caitlin, Cisco or Harrison Wells back on Earth-38 during his original visit, but the fact that he'd never even bothered to look for the Danvers family or any of the counterparts of the people he'd met during that trip to another Earth suddenly bothered him. Barry acknowledged that he'd never had a particular reason to do that kind of research, but after encountering Alex Danvers and Jimmy Olsen's counterparts in Doctor Deegan's altered reality, he found himself unable to shake the thought out of his mind.

 _What are they like over here when reality_ isn't _being manipulated by a mad psychiatrist with delusions of grandeur?_

With Cicada still apparently 'licking his wounds' after Caitlin/Killer Frost was confirmed to be immune to his dagger's power-negating abilities, Iris doing some research with Ralph and Sherloque, and Caitlin and Cisco working on treating Cisco's injuries, Barry had decided to indulge his curiosity and spent some time trying to find out about the lives of Alex Danvers and James Olsen in his universe. After crossing off a range of candidates who either didn't live in America or were just too old or young to fit the right criteria, Barry determined that Olsen was working as a news photographer in New York, while Alex was a police officer in the small town of Leesburg, some distance down the coast from Central and Starling, apparently working under her father Fred (which was definitely different from their home reality; he was pretty sure Kara had mentioned that her Earth father's name was Jeremiah and he was a scientist).

Once he had found the individuals he was looking for, Barry left a message to assure Iris and the rest of the team that he'd be available if anything urgent came up regarding Cicada before he ran to New York to take a look at Olsen. After he found the office building where Olsen worked, Barry had quickly run through the office before he found the dark-skinned young man sitting in a briefing room in the newspaper offices casually talking with his co-workers. The man in question looked more relaxed than the version Barry had met on Earth-38, which Barry could only attribute to the fact that this version of Olsen had never been in the kind of dangerous situations that the other Olsen had evidently grown used to, living in a world where alien attacks were an almost regular event and he was a close friend to one of humanity's greatest heroes.

With his curiosity satisfied in that regard, and Olsen unaware that he'd ever been there, Barry then ran from New York to Leesburg, a longer trip that was only delayed by the need to look up the route; Leesburg was such a small town it seemed like the kind of place you could only find if you were already aware of it or actively looking for it. Eventually he made his way to the outskirts, but his plans underwent an unexpected shift when he ran past a particularly familiar face in the streets.

"Sara?" Barry said, as he quickly came to a halt in front of the woman he'd spent so comparatively little time with despite her close relationship to his closest heroic friend, his confusion only increasing when he recognised her companion. "Ray? What are you doing here?"

"Following up a lead on a supernatural fugitive," Ray Palmer replied as he looked curiously at Barry, even as the three moved off the street to stand in a small alley where they'd be less likely to be spotted by any passers-by. "What are _you_ doing here? I mean, I know this is your time period, but it's a bit out of your area, isn't it?"

"Just… checking something out," Barry shrugged, quickly taking in their clothes. In contrast to the 'fighting attire' he was used to seeing them in, Sara and Ray were each wearing smart suits in a formal style that put him in mind of Joe or other detectives when they were on a case. Considering what he knew about their current mission, Barry wondered what they were doing in the present, but decided not to feel hurt that they hadn't asked him or Oliver for help; like all of his masked colleagues, the Legends preferred to handle things themselves unless they had to get help.

"Checking something out?" Ray repeated, looking at him in confusion. "You're all the way out here-?"

"It's just a personal matter I wanted to satisfy my curiosity about; nothing dangerous," Barry assured them. It wasn't as though he was ashamed of his decision to look up the alternates of his Earth-38 associates, but he just didn't see any point in telling everyone else about it. "But on that topic, what are you doing here?"

"To be sure, you've heard about the supernatural fugitives we're tracking, right?" Ray asked.

"Yeah…" Barry nodded, mind quickly going over what he'd heard about that particular situation; he wasn't as close to the remaining Legends as he could be, particularly after Professor Stein's death, but he still tried to keep up with their problems even if he had his own threats to deal with. "Something about… some kind of supernatural prison basically had a break-out, right?"

"Pretty much," Sara nodded at him. "Anyway, we detected a particularly potent supernatural energy lead in this area, and traced it to reports of… well, it seems like there's some kind of cult operating here." The former assassin looked at Barry curiously. "You seriously didn't know about that?"

"Uh… to be honest, I didn't really look into this place's local history in any real depth," Barry shrugged, deciding he might as well give them something. "I just wanted to check on Alex's alternate-"

"Alex?" Sara and Ray repeated in surprise.

"As in Alex _Danvers_?" Sara asked, looking at Barry with a new intensity. "Her counterpart lives here?"

"Yeah…" Barry nodded uncertainly.

"You mean this isn't just a coincidence?" Ray asked, reaching into his jacket to pass Barry a piece of paper. Taking the paper from Ray, Barry was initially just curious to see that it was a fairly standard amateur 'Missing' poster, but his eyes widened significantly when he took in the name.

 _Linda Danvers_.

When he saw the photograph that took up the centre of the poster, Barry almost couldn't believe what he was looking at. The face in the picture wasn't exactly Alex Danvers, as it was rounder and struck him as somewhat softer, as well as the brown hair being longer than the DEO agent's usual style, but the resemblance was still clear to anyone who'd met Alex Danvers.

 _Alex has a sister_? Barry wondered as he stared at the poster in surprise. _A_ biological _sister?_

"You think-?" he began.

"I thought it was just a coincidence at first, but what are the odds of her _not_ being related to Alex's doppelganger now?" Sara nodded firmly.

"Point," Barry conceded. "So this girl's been missing for the last few days?"

"And since it's the last big thing to happen in this town, we think it's connected to… whatever's here," Ray nodded. "We were going to try and talk to the family to get more details-"

"I'm in."

"You're 'in'?" Sara looked pointedly at Barry. "This is our problem-"

"This is _Alex's_ problem," Barry cut Sara off. "I get that she isn't going to be the Alex who came to the wedding, but this Alex… she helped Kara during the reality reset; I get that she probably won't remember it _now_ , but if I can help her somehow it's the least I can do."

"Reality reset?" Ray asked.

"Long and freaky story that we probably don't have the time for," Barry replied, still unsure how to feel about how he'd spent the last few days with Oliver's skills rather than his own (a part of him was still wondering how he'd do with a bow and arrow now that he had the memory of those few days even if he didn't have the training-enforced reflexes any more). "The point is, I'm here to check on Alex and I want to help you help her; what can I do?"


	2. Interviewing the Danvers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a minor 'game', can anyone guess where I got the inspiration for Sara, Barry and Ray's aliases?  
> A very dialogue-heavy chapter, but things will pick up; I obviously took some inspiration from Peter David's take on them, with only a few necessary tweaks, but I hope you like this alternative take on the Danvers regardless of its source

"You're sure you can do this?" Sara looked sceptically at Barry as the three of them stood outside the Danvers household, Barry now dressed in a smart suit he'd 'borrowed' from a nearby clothing store (it wasn't stealing if he was going to put it back as soon as the interview was over).

"Hey, which of us is the one who _actually_ works for the police?"

"You're a CSI, I'm pretty sure you don't actually _meet_ the suspects most of the time-"

"And I spent years living with Joe and basically doing everything I could to argue that my dad was innocent; I think you can assume I've picked up a few things over the years," Barry said. "Look, I'm not going to stick around and join your mission long-term, but I'm not going to leave until I know that Alex's sister is all right-"

"And nobody's complaining about having you along for the ride," Ray smiled at Barry in understanding. "We've got a situation, and you're willing to help us out; we appreciate the back-up."

"Let's get this done," Sara said, walking up to the door and knocking sharply on it as Barry and Ray got into position on either side of her. After a few moments, the door opened to reveal a tall man in a police uniform; Barry was immediately reminded of photos he'd seen of Kara's adopted father Jeremiah when they'd exchanged stories about their parents, except for the fact that this man seemed a bit thinner than Jeremiah.

"Officer Fred Danvers?" Sara asked, holding up a security badge (Barry didn't know if that was legitimate or something the _Waverider_ had faked, but he wasn't going to over-analyse that issue). "Special Agent Cameron Roberts; this is Agent Julian Kane and Agent Lawrence Gardner. We're here to ask you a few questions about your daughter's disappearance."

"Linda?" the man looked sharply at her, before he swallowed his initial reaction and nodded tentatively at the three. "Well… come in."

As soon as Fred Danvers had stepped aside to let them in, Barry shifted into Flashtime and run up the stairs to carry out a search of the house; they had no reason to believe that the Danvers had anything to do with their daughter's disappearance, but anything he could pick up could be helpful, particularly when there were questions they wouldn't be able to ask without giving away too much. After a search of the large room with a double bed turned up nothing more interesting than a well-thumbed copy of the Bible, Barry turned his attention to the other two upstairs bedrooms, immediately assuming that the one with the unmade bed was Alex's while the unused one belonged to the missing Linda.

Even if Barry hadn't been a speedster, it wouldn't have taken long for him to find a collection of police procedure manuals that made Barry suspect Alex's doppelganger was studying for a possible promotion. By contrast, Linda's room seemed basically empty apart from a few clothes and books, which matched what he'd expect from a young woman in her twenties who'd just recently left her parents' house. As he was searching her bedside table, Barry was surprised to find a leather-bound red journal, a quick glance of its contents revealing that it was full of entries up until a couple of weeks ago. Deciding that this was the best clue he was going to get, Barry took a moment to make sure he hadn't accidentally knocked anything out of place before he ran back down to rejoin Sara and Ray, so subtly that neither Danvers would realise what had happened unless they had been actively looking for him to move.

As he entered the room, Barry was surprised to see that Alex's mother actually looked rather like her counterpart back on Kara's Earth based on photos he'd seen in Kara's apartment, save for the fact that she had shorter brown hair as opposed to Eliza Danvers' long blonde style. Moving into a position where it would look like he was just behind his associates, Barry returned to regular speed as Fred Danvers introduced the three investigators to his wife Sylvia.

"So," Fred asked, with the probing stare that Barry recognised of a natural cop looking for information, "why would the FBI be looking into a small-town missing person's case?"

"We have reason to believe that it may tie into another, larger case we're investigating at the moment," Sara replied promptly. "I'm not at liberty to disclose any more at this time, but any information you can give us about your daughter's disappearance could be useful."

"Exactly," Ray smiled politely. "So, Mr and Mrs Danvers, do you have any… suspects… for who might have taken your daughter?"

"No," Sylvia shook her head. "Linda's been distant for a while… don't get me wrong, she never turned us away, but it was like… we just didn't know how to _talk_ to her any more."

"What about her sister?" Barry asked.

"Lexa?" Sylvia responded.

"Lexa?" Barry repeated curiously, mind flashing to the stories he'd been told about Kara's history with the Luthor family back on her Earth. "Her name's… Alexandra, right?"

"Linda… always called her 'Lexie' when they were younger because she liked the alliteration of it with her own name," Sylvia explained, sniffing slightly at the memory. "The girls grew out of the original nickname itself, but the idea…"

"It helped bring them together," Sara smiled. "I understand; I… was a younger sister myself, and it's…"

She shook her head, smiling apologetically at the older man. "Sorry about that; so where does… Lexa work?"

"Down at the station with me," Fred smiled. "Well, I say she works _with_ me, but the girl's on the fast-track to becoming a detective; not ashamed to admit I've become pretty good staying on patrol duty."

"Staying in the thick of the action, right?" Sara nodded at him. "My father was the same; even when he got promoted, he tried to stay on the streets when he could afford to get out."

"Your dad was a cop?"

"And the best man I ever knew," Sara replied, Fred relaxing slightly at this show of approval from the apparent agent.

"Anyway," Ray said, "as long as we're talking about our jobs, what does Linda do?"

"She's a freelance artist," Fred shrugged, the brief moment of camaraderie with Sara shifting to dissatisfaction. "Makes money selling sculptures and other knick-knacks to crafts fairs and the like; don't get it myself, but she's pretty good at it, if you like that sort of thing."

"Where does she keep her work?" Barry asked.

"She got an apartment on the other side of town a few months ago; just comes over here for dinner once or twice a week."

"Uh… sorry if this is getting personal, but if Linda doesn't come over that often, couldn't she just be-?"

"We still call her at least once a day, and Lexa drops in on her sister during her own patrols when she's got the time," Sylvia explained. "Linda doesn't always say much, but when we call, she always _answers_ … until this week, anyway…"

"She answers _you_ ," Fred observed, now with a bitter edge to his voice. "And we're lucky to get that these days…"

"She's just trying to find herself-"

"And how long can you use that, Sylvia?" Fred glared over at his wife. "Ever since Meeke's wife left it's like Linda doesn't know what she wants any more; she's just… been giving us attitude for months."

"Fred!" Sylvia looked urgently at her husband. "Linda lost a major source of support-"

"Almost a _year_ ago; we should just keep letting her use that as an excuse?" Fred countered. "Seems like these days she barely lifts a finger foranyone if it isn't her middle finger, outside of her usual art crap…"

"She's a good girl, Fred; she just… she needs to get back to the right path…" Sylvia said, even as a slight tension in her stance reminded Barry uncomfortably of the early days in the West house when Joe had pretended to humour his insistence on his father's innocence before he gave up on that approach.

"Whatever's happened to her, we're going to do what we can to find your daughter, Mrs Danvers," Sara nodded reassuringly at the woman, trying not to pay too much attention to Fred Danvers' suddenly more bitter expression.

"We'll let you know as soon as we find anything," Ray added, smiling reassuringly at Sylvia before he turned to follow Sara and Barry out of the house.

"Well?" Sara looked curiously at Barry once they were outside. "Any clues up there?"

"Nothing obvious, but I did find this." Barry took the journal out from under his jacket.

"A journal?" Sara raised an eyebrow as she gave Barry a grim smile. "I'm not sure if I should be amused or amazed."

"Let's…" Barry began as he opened the journal, only to pause as he took in what he was looking at.

"What?" Sara asked.

"This… is odd," Barry observed, rapidly scanning through the journal before he looked up at Sara. "This journal's missing a few things."

"Missing a few things?"

"She's making references to meetings and friends, but she doesn't always say where they're meeting or even who they are," Barry explained. "I mean, I didn't keep one of these myself, but I checked out Iris's a few times when we were growing up-"

"Really?" Sara looked pointedly at Barry with a dangerous yet teasing grin.

"I was worried about her and dealing with my own feelings for her whenever I got the idea that she had a date with a guy I didn't like; it's not like I did it a _lot_ , OK?" Barry said defensively. "The point is that Iris always put down more names and places in her journal than Linda does here; it's almost like she's… well, like she's hiding something."

"In her diary?" Ray asked as Sara took the journal from Barry. "Isn't that over-thinking things a bit? Maybe she's just a bit private-?"

"Nobody's this private in something this personal unless they're really trying to be," Sara said, looking up from the journal after a brief flick through its pages. "I agree with Barry; whatever's going on here, Linda was trying to make sure her parents don't learn something about her social life."

"But this is just the journal she kept at their place," Barry pointed out with a thoughtful smile. "Which doesn't rule out the possibility that Linda has another one at _her_ place that might have more information…"

"Should we be focusing on her like this?" Ray put in. "I mean, I appreciate that _Alex_ means something to you two, but _Lexa_ hasn't even met either of you-"

"This isn't just about helping Alex's counterpart, Ray," Sara cut the scientist off. "Linda's basically the only real lead we have of anything strange going on in this town at the moment, which means that we need to find her to at least eliminate her as a suspect if we're going to sort this mess out."

"Suspect?"

"She's hiding something from her parents and she's disappeared when we know supernatural entities are involved in events going on here; it's something we have to look into at least."

"…All right," Ray conceded with a nod. "If we're looking for clues, where's her apartment?"


	3. Investigating Linda Danvers

Walking into Linda's apartment, Sara was struck at the contrast between this place and the Danvers household. It wasn't like she hadn't lived in some dingy areas herself- her career in the League of Assassins had required her to spend some time squatting when just getting a hotel room wasn't an option- but this place was the kind of squalid where the owner's attempts to make it look better just reinforced the problems. The 'bookcase' was just a few wooden boards held up by bricks, the wardrobe and other sets of shelves had a half-finished look around the rougher woodwork, and the walls looked like they hadn't been painted for years. The bed looked fairly sturdy, but that seemed to be the only piece of furniture that anyone here was taking proper care of, and even the duvet looked a little worn in places. A door led down to a dingy basement full of unopened cardboard boxes and shelves displaying various items such as a sculpture of a human hand, a demonic-looking mask, or a jar with a snake curled around it. Checking the boxes revealed various art materials and other sculptures, including an elegant angel and a human head, each made of well-crafted glass, but nothing to obviously indicate where Linda had gone or what she'd been doing with herself outside of art.

"Anything?" Sara glanced over at Barry.

"Not obviously," Barry shook his head. "I mean, with all these sculptures, it's hard to figure out where she keeps anything else…"

"Think I've got something," Ray smiled over as he opened a drawer in a small, battered-looking desk. "When a girl keeps photos in a drawer, it's not exactly a good sign she's being open about everything, right?"

"That depends-" Sara began, before she walked over to look at the drawer's contents. "OK, _that's_ a bit warped."

"What?" Barry joined them, wincing slightly as he saw a photograph of Linda, topless apart from a black bra, embracing an older blonde man with shaggy hair and a leather jacket who somehow gave the impression of a more disreputable version of the tales Barry had heard about John Constantine. On their own, the photos were just tasteless, but the fact that they were clearly taken in a forest with one of those old-style instant-development cameras (Sara could never remember what those things were officially called) raised several questions about the kind of company Linda was keeping.

"OK," Ray said, "I'm not trying to be judgemental, but this is more than just some girl having teenage issues, right?"

"And this is going _way_ beyond just a kid being rebellious," Barry added as he pulled out a newspaper article. "Sylvia mentioned that Linda had been having trouble since Meeke's wife left, right?"

"You know who Meeke is?" Sara asked.

"Here," Barry said, handing the others the newspaper article. "According to this, Reverend Meeke reported his wife missing just over a year ago, claiming that she left him for another man…"

"You think it was something else?" Ray asked, noting the scepticism in Barry's tone.

"Let's just say there are a few other articles about Meeke here that remind me of when I was trying to figure out what killed my mom before I went to college," Barry observed, pulling out a few more articles, ranging from material that had clearly been cut out of newspapers to print-outs from various local news sites.

"As in… when you were looking for evidence that your dad didn't do it?" Ray asked.

"Exactly," Barry nodded. "I mean, this is obviously a bit more amateur-ish than I ever was, but the basic idea seems to be the same."

"You think that Meeke killed his wife?" Sara asked.

"Or Linda at least believed he did."

"She was an amateur?" Ray noted. "When her dad _and_ sister were cops?"

"Sometimes people just can't make it click even if it runs in the family," Barry shrugged, as he picked up one of the photos of Linda and the unknown man, "But that doesn't explain why she was keeping these photos with her investigation…"

"Wait a minute…" Sara said, taking the photograph from Barry and studying it for a moment before she nodded. " _This_ is the guy."

"What-?" Barry and Ray began, before Sara picked up the glass head and turned it to its side, revealing that it clearly resembled the man in the picture when viewed in profile.

"So… not just some casual fling, huh?" Ray observed with an awkward smile.

"But probably not a healthy one," Sara indicated the photos, before glancing over at Barry. "Could you check the journal?"

"Just a- done," Barry said, glancing between the journal and the first article he'd discovered. "Yeah, I think I see what you were thinking; Linda stopped seriously writing in this at about the same time that Meeke's wife disappeared."

"This is all starting to create a _very_ disturbing picture," Ray noted. "So… where do we go from here?"

"Maybe this?" Sara said, holding up a photo depicting Linda and a group of people that included the mysterious blond man standing in front of a building that seemed to be an abandoned warehouse. "It's not much of a clue, but if we can work out where this warehouse is, maybe we can find out whoever these people were, and maybe even where they are now?"

"Yeah… I mean, Leesburg isn't that big; if we know what we're looking for, how long can it take?" Ray smiled. "Especially with Barry here to help out."

"OK," Barry nodded at Ray and Sara. "I'll take a loop around the city and get back to you when I find something; see you soon?"

* * *

A few minutes later, as the trio walked into the warehouse Barry had identified as the only such building matching the one in the photo, neither he, Sara or Ray were entirely sure what they were expecting to find in this place. The idea that Linda had some interest in the disappearance of Meeke's wife was too subtle for them to shift their focus to exploring that avenue, especially when it seemed like nobody else had ever shown any sign of thinking there was anything suspicious about the woman's disappearance, so right now this warehouse was the closest thing they had to a lead on what had been happening in Linda's life.  
  
As they looked around the warehouse, Barry was sure he wasn't the only one feeling as though this would just turn out to be another dead end. He didn't know who had owned this place before it closed or what it had been used for, but as far as he could tell the only thing it held now was a bunch of empty boxes-  
  
His assessment came to a halt when he noticed an empty area near the middle of the warehouse, with a large circular design literally carved into the ground. There was an inner and outer circle, with one large design in the centre that put Barry in mind of a pentagram with more complex extra sigils. The line between the two circles contained various smaller sigils of various shapes, including squares and circles with extra shapes carved inside them, and others that resembled snowflakes or triangles. The thing that Barry most clearly understood was the vague marks in the circle itself that clearly weren't part of the original carving, but he didn't want to clearly label them in case he was jumping the gun…  
  
"OK," Barry looked grimly between the circle and his two fellow heroes. "I don't know much about magic, but _this_ isn't a good sign, right?"  
  
"I doubt it," Sara affirmed as she crouched down to examine one of the marks on the circle, rubbing her fingers over it before she looked up. "I'm not exactly an expert on what the sigils might mean, but this stuff is definitely blood that's been left to dry over the last few days… which is about how long it's been since Linda went missing."  
  
"Ah," Ray observed tentatively. " _That's_ not encouraging…"  
  
He trailed off and looked uncertainly at the circle for a moment before he glanced back at Sara and Barry. "So what now? Like Sara said, we're not exactly experts-"  
  
"Good thing I'm here, then," an unfamiliar voice said. Looking up, Barry saw a new figure walk into the room, in the form of a man wearing a tan trenchcoat over a dark suit.  
  
"Constantine?" Ray looked at the man in surprise. "What are you doing here?"  
  
"While you two were out running interviews, I did a little search of my own to see if I could work out what kind of magic we were dealing with here, and found a few interesting traces around town that led to this warehouse," the occult detective explained with a dismissive shrug. "There wasn't anything to suggest that somebody was actually here right now, but there's something 'bout this place that makes it clear there was some kind of ritual performed here."  
  
"A ritual?" Barry repeated.  
  
"You'd be the Flash Oliver told me about, right?" Constantine asked, exchanging nods with Barry before he indicated the circle. "Yeah, this kind of thing's used for a few rituals; can't be certain what this one's for, but with the amount of power traces this thing left…"  
  
His voice trailed off as he crouched down to examine some of the marks carved into the edge of the circle, a probing expression on his face as he nodded in contemplation. "Oh, this _really_ isn't good…"  
  
"You recognise those sigils?" Ray asked. "What are they?"  
  
"If I'm right, this stuff's Enochian."  
  
"Enochian?" Barry repeated.  
  
"Supposedly, John Dee received it in the sixteenth century," Constantine explained in an almost disturbingly solemn tone. "This thing's meant to be the language of the angels."  
  
" _Angels_?" the other three repeated incredulously.  
  
"Yep," Constantine nodded. "I'm not an expert in the language, so don't expect a full-on translation, but from what I can understand, whoever we're dealing with here not only knew enough Enochian to write this spell, but was using it to penetrate that same prison dimension and summon an angel from it."  
  
"Hold on; summon an _angel_?" Sara repeated, waving a hand and looking urgently at Constantine. "Are you saying-?"  
  
"Yep," Constantine repeated. "Some of Mallus's old prison buddies are trying to get more of their associates out of jail, which seems to have included at least one angel."


	4. Angels in Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1: To stress this in advance, I had planned this basic plot out even before _Crisis_ introduced the Spectre, but I don't think my references to the Spectre here blatantly contradict anything we saw of the aforementioned spirit when Oliver merged with it to battle the Anti-Monitor.  
> 2: A talk with Blue Legends inspired me to 'fancast' Emma Lahana as Linda Danvers; just picture her with shoulder-length brown hair

"Angels," Ray repeated incredulously as the Legends and Barry stood around the desk in what had once been Rip Hunter's 'office'. "There were _angels_ in a Hell prison dimension?"

"Not that much of a stretch, actually," Constantine observed.

"Angels in Hell _isn't_ a stretch?" Zari looked at him in surprise. "I know I'm not that religious, but I'm pretty sure angels are meant to be in _Heaven_ -"

"Keep in mind that Lucifer wasn't the only angel who's meant to have objected to God after he created the world," Constantine interjected.

"Quit the enigmatic crap and cut to the chase," Mick growled at Constantine in a particularly rough manner even by the ex-thief's usual standards. "Like she said, why would any of those winged guys be down in Hell?"

"Biblical lore teaches us that when the Devil rose up against God and was cast down into Hell, he actually won about a third of the Heavenly Host over to his side before he tried to kill/overthrow the Big G," Constantine explained, leaning grimly over the desk as he spoke to the other heroes. "Result is that the third who rebelled all got sent down with Lucifer once the initial revolution fell apart; I've even run into one or two back in the day."

"You met an evil angel?" Sara asked.

"Tried to sneak out of the bad place by bringing an evil preacher back to life, but that was dealt with thanks to an old… 'friend' is probably the best term here," Constantine conceded before he continued. "Anyway, what most religions _won't_ tell you is that a few of those angels actually tried to apologise for taking part in Lucifer's attack."

"You're kidding," Charlie looked at Constantine with an incredulous grin. "Angels think they can get out of Hell by _saying sorry_?"

"Actually worked out for a few."

"It did?" Barry asked, wondering if Oliver felt this out of his depth when he was dealing with metahumans. "I mean… OK, I'm not saying I'm a religious expert, but if God's basically still keeping us out of Eden for what Eve did, would He really be willing to forgive angels who acted against Him directly?"

"Depends on if it's forgiving them to make them agents of divine judgement," Constantine said.

"…Yeah, _that_ doesn't sound pretty," Ray said, exchanging awkward glances with the rest of the team before he looked back at the exorcist. "What does that involve?"

"To give you some context, from what I've read 'bout those events, the first angel who tried to apologise tried to win back its role in Heaven by unleashing Noah's flood to punish the human race for not living up to God's standards, and got booted out and is meant to have been trapped in some kind of black gem for all of eternity because it was too angry to do the job with any sense of control," Constantine explained. "Next chap to get the job was responsible for the Ten Plagues of Egypt, and has to go around bonded to some mortal soul to give the angel the right perspective when making any of his future judgements."

"An angel needs perspective?" Sara asked.

"Actually… I can kind of see that," Barry nodded thoughtfully. "I mean, standards of morality and legality change all the time; homosexuality used to be explicitly illegal, prohibition made it a crime to even own alcohol for a while… something like an angel would probably be so far above us that they'd need a human to give them a clearer understanding of what they were judging or he'd just be sending someone to Hell for… stealing a few dollars from their mother's purse when they were a kid?"

"Or stabbing a sod with a giant pen for cheating on his taxes."

"That actually happened?" Zari looked at Constantine in surprise.

"From what I heard."

"Nice touch," Mick observed.

"Still an extreme response to a relatively minor crime on the scales of evil," Constantine countered.

"But you said that a fallen angel got out before-"

"The one I met only fell recently; the ones you'd summon with that ritual have been on lockdown since the first week of creation," Constantine countered. "If one of these pricks tried to get out that way, the other side'd be down on them like a ton of bricks; the one I fought last time knew all the tricks to blend in after watching us grow for years, but this one would practically need to bond with a human or draw the attention of everyone on both sides before it could do much more than flatten everything within a certain range."

"A 'certain range'?" Sara asked.

"Depends on the wingspan and other factors I can't be sure about; these things stay locked up for reasons beyond what side they chose."

"And that's not a risk when they take a human body?" Charlie asked.

"Human hosts would limit what they can do up here on purpose and by accident; it was meant to be sure only the truly repentant got out, but in practice most of these sods'd probably accept lesser power so long as they get the chance to beat the crap out of people," Constantine mused, before he turned to address the entire room. "Point is that there's precedent for angels being in Hell, and the ritual makes it clear what we're working with, so what we need to work out now is if we're dealing with some fanatical follower of Lucifer who got dragged out to do the sod's work, or just one of the gits who fell in with the wrong crowd and got sent off with the rest of the bad lot."

"…what does it say about existence when _angels_ are that petty?" Barry asked.

"Probably best not to ask that question, mate," Charlie smiled over at him before she glanced at Sara. "You're sure you want him around here? Thought you said the last speedster you got on the team didn't work out-"

"Wally was trying too hard and still needed to find his own way; Barry's got experience and other responsibilities and is just joining us to help with this one thing," Sara clarified, before she clapped her hands together and looked around the room. "Anyway, we're all agreed that the priority right now is finding this… angel?"

"And Linda," Barry put in.

"Obviously we'll _try_ to look for Linda…" Sara acknowledged, her voice trailing off as she looked apologetically at Barry.

The speedster and the former assassin looked at each other in a contemplative manner, but they each finally nodded in understanding. The search for Linda Danvers was still their personal priority, but based on the available evidence, they had to assume that she was already dead and focus their current efforts on stopping this apparently renegade angel.

"And then what do we do?" Zari asked. "I mean, I don't think we can exactly _kill_ an angel…"

"We'll work that out when we find it," Sara said firmly.

"Let's just hope it doesn't come to that…" Barry mused grimly.

"OK, so if we're searching for the angel, does that mean we're also going to try and work out who this guy is?" Zari asked, holding up the photograph of Linda with that unknown blond man.

"Why?" Mick asked. "Is he important?"

"When he seems to have been involved in whatever happened to Linda, we don't know who he is, and there's literally no record of his identity?"

"There isn't?" Constantine looked at Zari with raised eyebrows.

"You know that?" Barry asked.

"I spent some time talking with Nate about searching historical records in the field so I could fill in for him on the research side even before he left," Zari smiled. "Once you sent us those pictures, I ran a facial recognition search for him through Gideon while you were on your way back. This guy appears in a few photographs dating back to around the time when Linda started acting up, but there's nothing older than a couple of years at best."

"I see," Constantine nodded thoughtfully as he looked at the glass head. " _This_ could be interesting…"

"You think he's another one of these… supernatural fugitives you're all hunting?" Barry asked.

"Wouldn't be the first time any of us tried to adopt a secret identity," Charlie put in.

"OK, so that might explain why this guy's missing from our historical records, but it doesn't explain why this guy would be trying to let an angel out of Mallus's old prison, or what Linda has to do with anything," Sara pointed out, looking thoughtfully over the collected images of their potential 'crime scene' before turning back to Constantine. "You're sure this spell would summon an angel?"

"A few other things could get out, but you don't use Enochian unless you're doing something angel-related," the exorcist confirmed, bringing up one of the images of the carved circles from the warehouse. "Whatever happened here, someone dragged an angel out."

"And," Barry added, indicating the specks of blood around the carvings, "if these are any indication, we should probably start assuming the worst about whatever's happened to Linda…"

He didn't like to think about the idea of Alex's little sister being dead- it made him think unpleasantly of seeing Kara dead on the operating table, the others just that bit too late to save her from Thawne and Overgirl's experiments- but he had to face the facts, and none of them were presenting an encouraging picture.

"So… what does that mean for Linda?" Ray asked before Barry could bring it up himself. "I mean, if we're assuming this boyfriend of hers is the original fugitive, where does everyone else come in?"

"Doesn't bode well, anyway," Charlie pointed out, shrugging as the Legends turned to look at her. "Hey, you've got to admit that I was being fairly direct when you ran into me back in the day?"

"What _were_ you doing when they met you?" Barry asked.

"Impersonating the Queen of England back in the 1950s." Charlie shrugged at Barry's incredulous stare. "Hey, I was just having a laugh-!"

"That almost led to the dissolution of the monarchy because the Queen would have been institutionalised when everyone attributed your actions to her," Zari cut in.

"And as for the rest of the fugitives we've found so far…" Ray began.

"'Subtle' isn't really a word in their vocabulary," Mick said bluntly.

"Point," Sara nodded solemnly at the former thief before she picked up the glass head herself. "Which means that if this guy's intelligent enough to be staying low-key this long, particularly since he has a group behind him here on Earth, he probably has some kind of agenda…"


	5. The Not-Quite-Doppelganger

"You're sure that this is where we need to be looking?" Barry looked uncertainly at Constantine as he and a few of the other Legends stood on the edge of a river just outside Leesburg, although Zari and Charlie had stayed behind on the _Waverider_ to run a few more searches for details on Linda's apparent 'boyfriend'. Barry had his suit in the ring he'd received from Nora while Ray had the A.T.O.M. suit in his pocket, but Sara had a long coat on over her White Canary outfit even if Rory and Constantine were dressed in their usual clothes.

"There's been reports of strange lights in this area, and even a couple of mauled animals that suggest something was eating them after they were… mutilated," Ray explained, wincing slightly at the image. "It's not anything clear-cut, but add in the supernatural energies John traced this way and there's definitely _something_ going on around here."

"River as the source actually makes sense," Constantine observed, glancing down at the river as it flowed past them. "Water's one of the great constants of anything; if there's any kind of supernatural activity going down around here, a river's as good a place as any to start looking."

"OK, so which way?" Sara asked, looking around herself before her gaze settled on something. "Does that look likely to anyone else?"

Following Sara's gaze, Barry had to appreciate her point when he saw a cave in a nearby cliff, a tributary of the river flowing into the cave and a sense of heat coming from it.

"Yeah, that's a possible," Constantine nodded, as he looked thoughtfully at the cave.

"Is something wrong?" Ray looked curiously at the other man.

"'Wrong' may not be the word," Constantine said thoughtfully. "Heard a few stories, but there are some things you never hear confirmed; just a bunch of anecdotal tales that could just amount to people blaming bad luck on a few unusual twists…"

"Well," Ray shrugged, "let's just… walk in and see how this goes, huh?"

As the group exchanged awkward glances with each other, Barry and the Legends made their way carefully towards the cave entrance, Barry falling into a leading position; if anything came out of the cave, he was the one best qualified to get the others to safety before it did anything dangerous. As they came closer to the cave, Barry was about to allow himself to relax when he heard a faint screeching sound that appeared to be from inside the cave, which grew ever more distinct until-

When he saw the sonic waves hurtling towards his allies, it was only his own experience with similar attacks that gave Barry a chance to react. Quickly donning the Flash suit from the ring, he grabbed the Legends and hurried them out of range of the attack before he turned his attention back to the cliff, in time to see a black-and-white figure emerge from the shadows of the cave with a sadistic grin on her face.

" _You would dare to disturb my sanctuary_?" the figure said, glaring maniacally at the assembled heroes.

"Oh crap," Barry said, quickly moving to get the Legends a safe distance away from the cave entrance.

"You… know who that is?" Sara looked uncertainly at Barry after she'd regained her balance.

"In a sense," Barry nodded, as he looked apprehensively up at the figure now floating above the cave. "It's Silver Banshee."

"Silver Banshee?" Mick looked at his old nemesis in surprise. "Sounds like a bad stripper."

"Anything but," Barry said grimly. "She's one of Supergirl's enemies."

"As in this thing's from Supergirl's world?" Ray asked, looking uncertainly at the woman before them, still floating in the air as though waiting for some kind of cue even as he took the A.T.O.M. suit out of his pocket.

"Or another doppelganger," Mick put in.

"That part's… probably more likely," Barry conceded. "From what I heard about her history in that world, Banshee was pretty focused on her vendetta with Kara; she wouldn't really have a reason to come all this way just for me…"

"What was her history?" Sara asked.

"Basically, back when I first went to Kara's world, Silver Banshee was originally one of Kara's colleagues until Kara got her fired for selling stories to another news outlet. From what Kara told me, it activated some kind of family curse that would make this spirit possess her unless she killed whoever wronged her…"

"And that was Kara?" Ray asked.

"Yeah," Barry nodded. "I helped Kara capture her when she was working with this other villain called Livewire who could generate electricity, and gave the local police some pointers to keep them locked up because they didn't have any meta-human containment facilities at the time; as far as I know, she's been in prison ever since."

"Huh," Constantine looked up at the woman floating above the cave with a raised eyebrow. "And this isn't her? As in it's not the one you fought back then?"

"She looks a little different, but the question is how much…" Barry mused, before he ran back towards the cave, looking up at the woman. "Hey! Banshee?"

" _Silver Banshee_!" the woman yelled down at the Flash, letting out another scream that the Scarlet Speedster only just managed to avoid.

"OK, Silver Banshee; gotcha," Barry nodded at the woman. "Is there any chance we could just check that cave and-?"

Another sonic scream cut off Barry's attempt to make any further arguments, the Scarlet Speedster only just managing to get away before the scream hit the ground near him. Barry was about to charge up a lightning strike when Ray flew in from above, now wearing his suit and firing a few quick blasts at their new enemy. The blasts managed to send the woman falling back before she could react to the new arrival, but she let out a new scream even as she fell that sent Ray flying backwards. Mick came hurrying in to fire a blast from his fire-gun, but Banshee flew upwards out of range of the fire before launching another sonic scream at the former thief. Barry managed to run in and get his old adversary to safety before the sonic scream struck him, but he was relieved to see that Sara and Constantine were just watching from the sidelines.

Just as Barry was turning back towards the cave, he was shocked when he heard a gun fire from off to the side, striking the woman in black and white in the side. As he and Sara turned to look at the source of the gunshot, Barry's eyes widened in surprise when he saw the figure of Alex Danvers standing-

 _Lexa_ , Barry reminded himself, taking in the woman's police uniform and the incredulous stare as she looked at Silver Banshee; this woman clearly wasn't used to anything more dangerous than human crooks. To his surprise, Silver Banshee actually paused for a moment as she took in the new arrival, going so far as to drop back to the ground to look at the policewoman more closely, but Barry quickly shifted his focus to the fight at hand; whatever was going on with Silver Banshee and Lexa Danvers, he knew that Banshee was dangerous. Before Banshee could overcome her distraction, Barry ran up behind the woman and delivered a rapid series of punches to her back, inflicting so many hits that the strange woman fell to the ground before she had time to do more than start to turn her head.

"Oh my God…" another voice said, Barry looking up to see Lexa Danvers looking between him and the fallen Silver Banshee in shock. "F… Flash? What are you doing here, and… what happened to Mattie?"

"You know this woman?" Barry said, remembering to vibrate his voice; he was dealing with a woman from his Earth whom he couldn't guarantee was trustworthy, so it would be best to be safe.

"She-she's an old… I mean, I've never seen her look like _that_ , but she's a friend," the woman explained, looking at Silver Banshee uncertainly. "Mattie's had some… trouble, recently… her brother died when a man had some kind of psychotic breakdown…"

"Psychotic breakdown?" another voice said, Barry looking over to see Sara Lance walking up to the two as she looked anxiously at Lexa. "What happened?"

"He just… everything went crazy a couple of weeks ago, and we still don't know what really happened," Lexa explained, shaking her head. "It's… I get a headache even thinking about it, but a shop-owner just shot PJ during that craziness, and he was going off on some rant about how 'Destiny decreed that punks' would always try to loot his shop and Mattie's sure that PJ just went in there…" Lexa shook her head. "Nobody understands what it was all about, but Mattie…"

"She's been angry about it," Sara nodded in grim understanding.

"Destiny?" Barry repeated, mind flashing back to Deegan's attack; he and Oliver had been so focused on restoring their lives they hadn't really stopped to look at what might have happened elsewhere in the world before Deegan was defeated. "Did he say anything about a doctor?"

"Maybe…" the policewoman said tentatively, before she looked properly at Barry. "Look, Flash, I'm sorry if this is rude, but what are you even _doing_ here?"

"I'm helping a few friends with a lead on an… ongoing situation," Barry said, deciding not to ask any stupid questions on how this woman could recognise him; he might not make many public appearances, but he'd made enough that people would have seen photos of him even if they didn't like in Central City. "What are you doing out here, officer?"

"I… received a call from my sister," Lexa Danvers explained.

"Your sister?" Sara repeated, looking at Lexa in surprise. "I understood she was missing?"

"Which is why I came here… look, I'm sorry if this is rude, but who are you?" Lexa looked uncertainly at Sara. "And how do you know about Linda?"

"I'm the White Canary, and this is the Atom, Heat Wave, and… Warlock," Sara replied briskly, indicating Ray, Mick and Constantine as they came up behind her, even as the three men maintained a semi-respectful distance from the main group. "Like the Flash said, my team are… dealing with a long-term situation, and he's assisting us in our current case; you say you're here about Linda Danvers?"

"Again, you know about that?"

"We… have reason to believe her disappearance is related to our current investigation-"

"You know who has Linda?" Lexa moved forward to grab Sara's shoulders, the former ninja looking genuinely startled at the move; Barry guessed she was having slight trouble adjusting to the idea of Alex's doppelganger doing anything even potentially threatening to her. "Where is she? What happ-?"

"That's a long story, and to be frank the idea that you got a message from Linda raises further questions about what we thought had happened to her anyway," Sara cut the other woman off even as she carefully removed Lexa's hands to look earnestly at the other woman. "What was the message?"

"Just…" Lexa began, before she pulled out her phone and showed the screen to Sara, displaying a few brief words; I'M ALIVE. HELP ME LEXIE.

"Lexie?" Barry asked, remembering to hide his knowledge.

"My childhood nickname," Lexa replied with a slight smile. "Linda was the only person who constantly called me that."

"And you think this is from _her_?" Sara looked at the other woman with tentative scepticism.

"She was the only person who _ever_ called me 'Lexie'," Lexa said, her smile shifting to a resolute glare. "My parents called me 'Alexa' or 'Alex' when I was younger, but Linda started with 'Lexie' and it just changed to 'Lexa' as we got older…"

"I see," Sara observed. "So… what led you here?"

"I tracked her phone."

"Right…" Sara nodded tentatively before she glanced over at Barry. "Flash, can I have a word?"

Barry nodded in understanding and quickly ran Sara to a point a short distance from the cave, leaving Lexa looking awkwardly at the other three Legends (he briefly thought about Flashtime, but decided Sara's potential fatigue wasn't worth the risk).

"We're bringing her in."

"Seriously?" Barry looked at Sara in surprise. "You do get that she's not Alex, right? I'm not saying that Lexa's incapable- her record with the department's pretty good from what we heard- but she hasn't got any experience in something like this-"

"She came this far on just the hope that she could find her sister after this long, and she's turned up evidence that we can't ignore," Sara explained. "I know it's a risk, but… I mean, if this was me in Linda's position, I'd like to think that Laurel would be doing the same thing for me."

Barry simply nodded in acknowledgement of that particular observation. He'd certainly been willing to risk his own speed on a chance to save Wally's life, and that time around he barely even knew Wally even if he _wanted_ to consider the younger man a brother given his long history with the West family; if he was willing to put his life on the line for Wally, he wasn't likely to convince Lexa to stop trying to find her own sister.

"OK," he said, returning Sara to Lexa's position as he looked at the rest of the team.

"Whatever Silver Banshee is, she's using the body of Mattie Harcourt as a host, so we need to work out an exorcism or something later; right now, we've got evidence that Linda might still be alive somewhere in this cave, so let's focus on that and see about helping Miss Harcourt later."

"Doctor," Lexa corrected.

"OK, _Doctor_ Harcourt, but everything else still stands," the speedster nodded.

"Enough talk," Mick said, raising his weapon and indicating the cave. "We've stopped that banshee thing; let's find that girl and deal with-"

"Whatever else is down there," Constantine cut the ex-thief off.

"Whatever else?" Lexa looked at the British man in surprise. "It's not just that… Banshee thing?"

"That's… complicated," Barry said briefly. "Just stick with us and stay safe."

As Lexa fell into position alongside the rest of the group and they made their way carefully into the cave, Barry crossed his fingers and hoped that there wasn't going to be anything too dangerous inside this cave, even as he doubted they'd be that lucky; if Silver Banshee was just at the entrance, there was no telling _what_ was going to be waiting for them inside…


	6. The Chaos Flow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did a bit of research about the original _Constantine_ show and realised that I needed to refine a few of my past ideas about how angels worked, so Chapter 4 has received a few edits; hope you find my changes interesting.

"So," Barry looked over at Constantine as they walked further into the dark cave, "what do you think this cave has to do with anything?"

"I'll get back to you on that."

"Get back to us?" Ray looked at Constantine in surprise. "Why not just-?"

"Because if I'm wrong, I'd rather not have everyone get worried about nothing."

"Such as?" Lexa asked, looking uncertainly at the exorcist.

"You'll see either way," Constantine said, his tone nonchalant even as he smiled reassuring at the policewoman.

Barry didn't exactly like not telling Lexa everything when she was now working with them, but so far she seemed to be assuming that the reason her friend had attacked them was that Mattie had fallen victim to some kind of psychological meltdown after whatever had happened to make her a metahuman, rather than realise that 'Silver Banshee' was actually possessing her. Sara had been able to provide handcuffs to keep the woman contained while they went into the cave, but Barry and Constantine had discreetly stayed behind, Barry creating a stone carving on Constantine's instructions that would apparently keep Banshee trapped until they came back. Barry guessed that Lexa would have some questions about the situation later, but she probably attributed most of those to the fact that she was dealing with metahumans for the first time, rather than realising the full scope of the problem.

He wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of keeping the supernatural nature of the threat secret from Lexa, but on the other hand, he could appreciate that this wasn't the time to have that kind of talk when they were still walking into danger.

"So…" Lexa looked uncertainly around at the others, her gun held at her side. "How did you all… come together like this?"

"It's a complicated situation," Sara explained. "Heat Wave, Atom and I were selected to help another man deal with a… long-term problem he had to overcome, and we brought Warlock in as a consultant for our current situation after our first leader moved on; Flash is an associate who we work with as appropriate."

"As appropriate?"

"Just in case we're ever dealing with a big enough problem like that superpowered Nazi invasion last year," Barry clarified. "Not a great experience, but… well, it's always good to have back-up available, right?"

"Yeah, that really didn't look good…" Lexa said, shaking her head at the memory. "I mean, I get freedom of speech, but there has to be a limit, and letting Nazis get _that_ coordinated…"

"Yeah," the Flash nodded, a quick glance with Sara confirming that neither of them were going to tell her the full details of that particular event any time soon. "Look, let's just… see what's down here."

"And work out where it came from."

"Came from?" Mick looked at Lexa with a raised eyebrow. "This thing's new?"

"I've come up here for a weekend run practically every week since I graduated, and I've literally never seen-" Lexa began, before a creature that put Barry in mind of a monkey with the head and claws of a lion leapt out towards the group. Sara struck the demon with one of her batons before it could get in too close, followed by Lexa pulling out her gun and firing a quick shot at the centre of the demon's mass as it lay on the ground.

"Nice shot," Mick nodded at the cop even as she stared at the creature in shock.

"Wh… what the Hell is _that_?" the young woman looked between the thing she had just fought and her new associates.

"That could be a very long story," Sara observed, looking over at Lexa with a slight smile. "Do you want the short version?"

"How short?"

"It's a demon."

"I… don't think I wanted to know that," Lexa swallowed, before looking back at Sara. "You're serious?"

"It's a demon," Constantine nodded. "We've probably got a few more of that lot down here, actually."

"And… Mattie?"

"We're thinking some kind of spirit," Mick shrugged.

"She's possessed?"

"Like Flash said, we'll work out what to do with her once we've found whatever's down here," Constantine cut in. "I get that you're worried about your friend, but isn't your sister the priority right now?"

Lexa simply glared at the exorcist for a moment before she sighed and nodded at him.

"Let's go," Sara said, looking over at Barry. "And stay close; I don't want something to end up… possessing you or anything like that because you got too far ahead."

Barry nodded in acknowledgement of Sara's request, deciding not to object to her taking charge like that; he might have been in this business for over four years, but he'd experienced enough to recognise that he still didn't know that much about real magic, where Sara had at least been dealing with magic for a year or so.

"To check, if we run into more stuff like that-?"

"Just hit it and it should stay down," Constantine confirmed as he indicated the small form on the ground. "If that thing's an example of what's down here, it's basically more of a foot soldier than anything dangerous; they should normally just be a problem because they're attacking people in larger numbers."

"So… does that mean we should _expect_ more of those things?" Lexa asked uncertainly.

"If they were they'd have started attacking us already; if I'm right, I'm thinkin' they're just a few stragglers hanging 'round here after being drawn in by the cave."

"The cave?" Mick looked pointedly at Constantine. "What's the cave have to do with anything?"

"Tell you once I'm sure," Constantine affirmed as they continued walking, pausing only to telekinetically throw another small demon into a wall as it leapt towards them. "This is _definitely_ not lookin' good…"

"At least they're… just annoying, right?" Sara said, keeping up a guarded expression as she struck out at another approaching demon with her batons, knocking the creature down with almost disturbing ease. Mick turned his flame-gun on it without anyone even needing to ask him to deal with the creature, followed by Ray firing a couple of energy blasts to knock down the next wave.

As the group advanced further, Barry noted a strange illumination in the cave around them, which made it strangely easy to see the path ahead without offering a clear source for the light. As they advanced further, a few more demon-figures attacked them, ranging in type from a kind of shapeless clay-like figure to a few things that made Barry think of scarecrows, but the group were able to force them all back easily enough, ranging from Barry knocking them aside with a couple of fast punches to Constantine throwing another into the wall with a quick wave of telekinesis. At one point Lexa even managed to shoot a demon that resembled a giant centipede with a human skull for a head when it appeared on the ground, although she still looked at it in a manner that made Barry wonder if she was fighting down the urge to scream at just how weird her life had become so quickly.

 _Remember, she's_ not _Alex; she's the 'local' Alex who hasn't faced anything like this before…_

Just as Barry was about to take another step, Sara held out both arms to bring an abrupt halt to their progress. Looking ahead of the group, Barry realised that their path had come to what looked like the edge of an underground ditch, and a glance around revealed that the area they'd been walking through had suddenly opened up. There was now a deep canyon in front of them that had a stream of what Barry could only think of as purple water at the bottom of it, the water running in both directions as though the cave they had initially entered had just led them up to this point. Barry also noted a series of strange carvings on the walls that put him in mind of occult symbols he'd seen in TV shows and a few ritualistic-based crime scenes before Central City became the metahuman centre of the world, but he soon decided to focus on the more obvious strange detail of the purple water.

"What is that?" Ray asked, joining Barry as the two of them leaned over to look more carefully at the flowing water below them, the lights on Ray's helmet illuminating the strange stream all the more clearly.

"Just what I thought," Constantine said grimly, briefly stroking one of the carvings on the walls before he moved over to take a better look at the canyon. "This river is a chaos flow."

"A what?" Barry asked, standing up to look curiously at the warlock.

"Basically, it's a tributary of the River Styx."

"Styx?" Sara looked at Constantine. "Wasn't that part of the Greek underworld?"

"Exactly," Constantine nodded. "These things tend to emerge when some kind of chaotic force tries to influence a place, like some kind of major supernatural force bein' summoned or anything like that."

"Such as… what drew us here in the first place?" Sara asked.

"And the reason we haven't seen one of these before?" Ray put in. "I mean, with everything we've been dealing with, there's got to have been a few cases that… well, could have caused this kind of thing?"

"Last few fugitives just broke out wherever and decided to enjoy themselves; this thing was explicitly summoned, it's far more powerful, and whatever let it out probably didn't do a very neat job doing the original ritual anyway."

"So now what?" Mick asked. "We dam this thing?"

"Not an option," Constantine shook his head. "Even if we can find what started this particular flow in the first place, only thing to do after it's been created is just let it run its course, and that could take some time."

"Excuse me?" Lexa looked sharply at the exorcist. "Are you seriously telling me I'm going to have my town be a tributary of the _River Styx_ for the foreseeable future and there's _nothing_ I can do about it?"

"You can learn a bit more about what you're likely to be dealing with while it's here, but that's pretty much it," Constantine nodded.

"And… look, are you seriously telling me that _Linda's_ down here?" Lexa pulled out her phone as she looked tearfully along either side of the canyon before turning back to Constantine. "If this is… I mean, the River Styx was meant to lead to the underworld; could that mean-?"

"Couldn't happen," Constantine shook his head. "Chaos flows attract the supernatural, but they don't let the dead out of the underworld, even if they want to come out; if Linda was dead, she couldn't have sent that message."

"Uh… I get that this isn't my field, but if she was-?" Barry began.

"Takes longer than this to become a ghost, so that's not an option either," Constantine confirmed.

"You're not just-?" Lexa began.

"Trust me, John is _very_ blunt about this kind of thing; if he thought your sister was dead, he'd be telling you right away," Ray put in, briefly smiling at the policewoman before his grin faltered. "I… appreciate that's probably not something to smile about, but you get my point, right?"

"Right…" Lexa said, looking uncertainly along either side of the canyon before turning back to Sara and Barry. "So… where now?"

"That way," Constantine said, pointing in the direction that Barry only just now realised was leading downwards. "Whatever caused this flow will be as far underground as possible; it may have started somewhere else, but the source was brought here to keep the effects concentrated."

"The source?" Lexa looked sharply at Constantine. "I'm looking for _Linda_ -!"

"And if we're right, Linda… will be where the source is," Sara said, looking reassuringly at Lexa. "If we're going to find her, we follow the trail."

Nodding tentatively at Sara, Lexa joined the group as they walked carefully down the underground path. Barry noticed that the illumination that had filled the cave earlier had dimmed as they advanced further in, but he soon realised that there was another, more distinct source of light coming from up ahead.

As they advanced further down the passage, Barry's eyes soon settled on the distant sight of something at the end of the path, in a blaze of orange that Barry swiftly recognised as fire. For a moment he wondered if Constantine had downplayed what they were dealing with and this tributary would actually lead them into Hell, but forced that idea down when he realised that the fire was a circle on the ground rather than any kind of door; he might not know much, but he felt that Hell should have a more standard entrance.

"What the Hell?" Mick looked at the circle in surprise as they began to pick up the pace towards the flaming circle. As the Legends and the others drew closer, Barry noticed that there was something in the middle of the circle, but it soon became clear that whatever was in the circle was trapped, judging by the way it was bent over on its knees. The exact features were hard to make out amid the flames that seemed to be coming from the figure's back and linking with the flaming circle around her, and as they gathered around the circle, Barry realised that the woman wasn't a stranger. The flames made it hard to see the figure clearly, and the hair seemed to be blonde rather than the brunette he'd seen in earlier photos, but from what he could make out of the woman's face…

" _Linda_!" Lexa called out, staring in shock at the figure in the middle of the circle. She ran towards the flaming circle at first, but the fires soon forced her back, the cop staring at her heated hands with a frustrated glare. Barry tried to run through the flames, but was forced to back off when he realised the full scope of the heat of the blaze in front of them; if he was feeling that kind of heat through the suit, he didn't want to imagine how the rest of the group must feel.

_And that's before I think about what Linda must be feeling like inside there…_

"What _is_ that?" Sara looked over at Constantine as they gathered around the flaming circle.

"And what is Linda doing-?" Lexa began, before her trapped sister suddenly reeled back with an agonised scream as the flames from the figure's back split from the circle to become a fixed shape, specifically in the form of…

"Are those… _wings_?" Ray looked between the flaming woman and Constantine in surprise. "So… she _wasn't_ a sacrifice?"

"Sacrificed?" Lexa looked sharply at Ray, even as Constantine shook his head in an exasperated manner at the former CEO.

"No… this is like you told us back in the _Waverider_ , isn't it?" Barry looked at Constantine with an anxious half-smile. "Linda's become the _host_ for the angel…"

"Angels?" Lexa looked at Barry incredulously. "We ran into demons getting down here and now _angels_ are possessing my sister?"

"Oh, there's no point worrying about the fine details of that, luvs," another voice said. "However Linda Danvers got here, she's staying in that circle until it's all over."

" _Buzz_?" Lexa turned to glare in outrage at the figure that had just emerged from the back of the cave. Turning around, Barry was grateful to see that the Legends were all just as confused to see a young man standing in the cave, wearing a black suit jacket and trousers over a loosely-buttoned white shirt, but it only took him a moment to realise that this was the man they'd previously seen with Linda in those photographs in her apartment.

"You know this guy?" Mick glanced over at the cop.

"H-he was… he was dating Linda for a while, but she…" Lexa began, before confusion shifted to outrage as she glared at Buzz. "What are you _doing_ to her?"

"Not much beyond what the world had done to her before I ever got there," Buzz grinned. "But when impressionable youths see their priest murdering his wife, it tends to cause an interesting religious experience."


	7. The Secret Life of Linda Danvers

"Saw her- but Reverend Meeke said his wife left-!" Lexa began to protest even as the heroes tensed around her.

"And you honestly believed that?" Buzz smirked at the young police officer. "Man wears a stupid collar with a black shirt and suddenly he's unable to tell a fib?"

The growing terror and shock on Alex's face was enough to confirm for Barry and the others that Lexa just hadn't thought about the situation that way. Without knowing more about the Meekes' relationship with the Danvers before his wife died, Barry in particular didn't feel comfortable commenting on it, but there was a certain tendency for professional investigators to automatically assume that they would know if someone close to them was capable of murder. As he got older, Barry sometimes wondered if Joe had been so fixated on the idea that Henry killed Nora because it was easier to drive himself to be more suspicious than to risk missing something like that again…

"Linda knew the truth, didn't she?" Barry looked coolly at Buzz; the Legends might have good reason to think that the man was a demon or something, but right now Barry was just going to treat him as another suspect to interrogate.

"Went by the house to drop off a statue and saw him beating his wife bloody through the window, followed by her seeing a bloody carpet getting dumped the next day," Buzz shrugged. "Don't need to be Sherlock sodding Holmes to put the pieces together."

"Linda saw- no, she would have told-!" Lexa protested.

"When she heard Mommy dear talking about the reverend being a nice man who was being treated horribly by a cheating wife the same day?" Buzz grinned mockingly. Sara briefly made a slight move towards Lexa, but ultimately hung back, unsure how to interact with the doppelganger of her old one-night-stand. "Add on how she looked up to the guy _before_ she saw him do something like that, and she didn't even know who to talk to until I showed up."

"And that's just a coincidence, is it?" Constantine observed, a bitter glare on his face as he looked at Buzz. "You 'show up' while a young woman's having a crisis of faith?"

Barry didn't need to know much about demons to know that the odds of any of this being a coincidence were slim to none, but the idea that an innocent girl had been manipulated by a demon like that just because they could...

"Didn't make the good reverend do anything he wasn't going to do at some point anyway, I promise," Buzz grinned. "I just dropped in on Linda after the fact and pointed out how churches keep on torturing and killing people in the name of preaching how they're righteous and everyone else is goin' to Hell if we don't toe the line."

"It's not that simple-"

"You just need to take a quick look at history to know how bad things can get when religion goes notes," Buzz continued, waving a dismissive hand at Lexa's attempt to interrupt. "All I had to do was point out to Linda how that precious Bible of hers was knocked together by politicians with an agenda rather than anyone who actually knew what 'God' wanted, got her thinkin' that it might be better to live it up now rather than be all pious on the promise of later-"

"You filthy-" Lexa cut in, glaring in outrage at Buzz. "Linda was traumatised and _scared_ -"

"Yeah, but we got her past that soon enough," Buzz smirked at Lexa's automatic defence of her sister. "When you're spending most nights a year with an impressionable young woman, so desperate to find a new place for herself when everything she believed in got screwed over… well, it's surprisingly easy to talk her into taking part in a few of our… excursions."

"You mean she helped you kill people," Mick cut in, shooting a particularly cool glare at the man that Barry was increasingly certain was anything but human.

"Among other things," Buzz grinned back with a sick sense of pleasure. "I mean, she never wielded the knives herself, but she sat around and laughed when lookin' back on how one of our guys stabbed a woman and then teased her 'bout the state of her coat-"

"Linda- she was a traumatised _child_!" Lexa glared at Buzz. "You just… my sister is _not_ a monster!"

"She had the potential," Buzz smirked. "That's all we needed for this…"

"And on that topic, seriously, what the _Hell_ is all this about?" Constantine asked, waving a frustrated hand at the circle. "Yes, I get that you spent months corrupting a human soul to drag an innocent girl into a hellish ritual, but why did you need to go through all that effort just for her?"

"Like you all probably know, angels such as the one Miss Danvers is carrying around in her can't exactly exist on this plane of existence without a proper host," Buzz explained with a nonchalant grin that was marred by the malevolent gleam in his eyes. "Knew there were a few hanging around the old stomping-grounds, but even if we could lead one to a suitable crack, we needed the proper host to let it do its job… and that's where Linda Danvers comes in."

"Angels?" Lexa looked incredulously at Buzz before looking back at her sister. "You mean… those fires on her back… Linda's actually an _angel_?"

"Host of one, anyway," Buzz clarified with a more malevolent grin. "Taking longer than expected for her to sort through everything, but once that's done, bye-bye Leesburg and probably a few other areas into the bargain."

"…Host?" Lexa repeated.

"Angels like that one… basically, they've been on lockdown for so long that they can't exist on the mortal plane on their own," Constantine clarified for the young woman, grimly indicating the winged figure in the flaming circle even as he glared at Buzz in a manner clearly intended to ensure the man stayed quiet. "They need to be bonded with a human host to actually do anything down here or they'd burn out and take a chunk of the local area with them; looks like 'Buzz' here decided to try and force the issue."

"But if you're still going to blow everything up-" Ray began.

"She'll pass on a bit of divine judgement before anyone notices up there, and then she can keep on movin' ahead of the big guns," Buzz grinned. "If I picked a random host we'd just have a big boom and that would be it; giving her a host draws it out and makes it all the more fun in the long term."

"Right…" Barry nodded, hoping his loose grasp of criminal psychology would help him follow what might motivate supernatural fugitives. "So… did you choose Linda because she had a religious background?"

"And the way so many people pinned so much _faith_ in her," Buzz chuckled. "Made her a useful point of focus for this kinda thing…"

"People had faith _in_ her?" Ray repeated curiously. "I mean, she seemed like a nice enough girl, but-"

"Linda… Mom lost her parents shortly after I was born," Lexa put in, looking around at the heroes in a low voice as though she was ashamed to admit this. "It's not like Mom forced her views down our throats or anything like that- she always appreciated that Dad and I didn't really _get_ the church the way she did- but from what I heard… Mom conceived Linda just a few months after the accident, and it really… turned things around for her."

"In what way?" Rory asked, even as he kept his gaze fixed coolly on the other man.

"Well… Mom and Dad never said anything about it for _definite_ , but the way Dad's talked about it a couple of times… I think she got off alcohol because she didn't want to hurt Linda," Lexa explained. "I mean, I don't know that's it for certain, but Mom never touches alcohol whenever we're out and there's a notable lack of pictures of her from that time despite Dad going through a shutterbug phase when I was born; it's as though he was making sure _not_ to show what Mom was like back then… and then there was the time I was alone with her on the ten-year anniversary while Dad was supervising a school trip and she ended up having a drink or two…"

"And you wonder why Linda slipped in the end?" Buzz cut in. "All that time knowing she was Mommy's little saviour-"

"Mom never _forced_ Linda to-!"

"You don't have to say it to make the kid feel it," Buzz mocked. "She'd already spent so long just going along with Mom's religious crap because she never really thought about anything else; I gave her a few new pointers, and she was pretty much falling all over herself to do something else-"

"But you were wrong, weren't you?" Lexa glared at Buzz.

"Wrong?" Buzz repeated with a mocking grin. "She's here, isn't she?"

"But if you just wanted someone to turn an angel into some… engine of destruction, why hasn't Linda snapped already?" Lexa continued, her glare shifting to a cool grin of her own. "Because my sister's _not_ the monster you wanted…"

"She's not exactly Miss Innocent, Officer Danvers; the things she's done with my little group-"

"Did she ever kill anyone?"

"She knew that the rest of us had done a few-"

"But did she do them _herself_?" Lexa looked coolly at Buzz; Sara noticed some tension in the police officer's shoulders that she vaguely recognised from when she and the other Alex had been stuck in the concentration camp, the alternate Alex desperate to believe that Kara would be all right even when they learned what the Reich wanted her for.

"…Doesn't matter," Buzz said at last, even as he shot a frustrated glare at Lexa. "She's tarnished enough to be a host to this particular little number; once the angel's adjusted to its new form, that's when things get _really_ interesting."

"And you really think we'll let you get that far?" Sara countered, shifting into a combat stance as the others followed her example.

"I think you're not going to have much of a choice," Buzz said, spreading his arms with a smug grin. "Because now that you're here, it's time to hit you all with the big battle sequences for our closing act."

Barry tensed in preparation to get the others out of the way as Buzz snapped his fingers, but let himself 'relax' slightly as he saw another flaming portal open behind Buzz; he wasn't going to help anyone if he dived into some kind of mystical rift like it was just another breach to Earth-Two. Even with his heightened senses, it was only a moment later that two large figures were standing behind Buzz, each one looking malevolently at Barry and the Legends, along with a few other figures behind them that put Barry in mind of demon minions from some kind of video game, wearing loincloths with bat-like wings emerging from their shoulders and stubby horns on their heads.

The thing that surprised Barry the most was the contrast between the two largest figures summoned by Buzz. Much to Barry's bemusement, one of the larger figures looked for all the world like a humanoid cat, with five-fingered hands instead of forepaws and sharp-tipped ram-like horns on its head. The other figure looked like a pale human male, seemingly naked apart from dark 'trunks' and black markings around its hands and feet that could have been tattoos or ripped gloves, along with dark hair and pure green eyes, with a black hourglass 'tattoo' on his chest and two scythes in his hands.

"Meet Chakat and Tempus," Buzz grinned at the others. "You dealt with a few of my more minor associates earlier, of course, but these good fellows were just waiting in the wings, along with my… backup dancers, shall we say?"

"Ah," Sara said, before she glanced over at Constantine. "Anything we should worry about?"

"The big two could be a problem, but the rest should just be tough without being _stupidly_ tough," Constantine said grimly. "Hit 'em hard and hit 'em fast; we'll get to Linda later."

As Barry prepared for the fight, he could only hope that the warlock was right about that; he didn't know how things were going with Linda, but he had a feeling that they were running out of time…


	8. The Exorcism of Buzz

As the demons mounted their first attack, Barry's initial thought was to go after the general minions, but he soon found himself forced to change his plans when the pale figure Buzz had introduced as Tempus came charging towards Barry with a speed and focus that put him uncomfortably in mind of Savitar. Confirming that the demon was moving just fast enough to be a problem for him but would be far too swift for anyone else, Barry shifted into high speed and charged at the flying humanoid.

Narrowly avoiding the scythe blow Tempus used as his first assault, Barry countered with a few quick punches that knocked the demon off-balance but didn't seem to do much to his opponent. Glancing around as he started to vibrate, Barry noticed that Ray was trying to fight the giant cat-thing with a few of those plasma blasts while Sara, Rory, Lexa, and Constantine were struggling against the lesser demons, but before he could move to help any of his allies, he was suddenly struck in the side by something that left a sharp pain in his arm.

Quickly running back a few feet, Barry examined his arm, stunned to see that there was an actual wound there; he'd definitely been vibrating when he paused for that moment, and yet Tempus had still managed to cut him…

As the demonic figure charged towards him once again, Barry desperately grabbed the outstretched scythes before they could reach, relieved that some of the tricks he'd used while he was the Green Arrow had apparently stuck even after history was restored.

" _You truly think this will achieve anything_?"

Barry winced as Tempus spoke; the voice itself wasn't particularly loud, but there was a twisted edge to it that made Barry feel like something unpleasant had been shoved into his ears and was trying to go down his throat (he blamed Cisco for the fact that he was suddenly reminded of that _Simpsons_ Halloween special where Homer became a man-eating blob after eating that glowing goo).

" _We have come for the angel, and we will claim a fallen guardian regardless of your own pitiful efforts_ ," the demon continued, glaring mockingly at Barry as he strained against its weapons, even as the lack of motion from the others made it clear that they were both basically in 'Flashtime'.

"Fallen guardian?" Barry repeated, hoping that Tempus's mind was fast enough to pick this up. "But shouldn't you have taken it already? I mean, that angel _was_ in Hell…"

His voice trailed off as he went over everything Constantine had told them. "But that angel wanted to be forgiven, didn't it?"

" _What_?" Tempus looked at Barry with cool contempt.

"Like Lexa said, Linda isn't evil enough to drive that angel to start destroying the world, but that means that the angel doesn't _want_ to do anything that extreme either, right?" Barry continued, confidence growing as he continued to speak. "She had to bond with a human host to survive up here, but the hosts can't have so much influence that Linda could have stopped the angel if it really _wanted_ to destroy anything… that's just one of those angels who basically fell in with a bad crowd, right?"

" _It is not that simple_ -!"

"I think it is," Barry retorted, grinning as he glared at the increasingly frustrated-looking demon. "Linda's been missing for a few days; if you had one of the really ruthless fallen angels in her, she might have done _something_ , but I don't think _either_ of them are the killers-"

" _She will_ _ **fall**_!" Tempus roared, crossing his scythes and launching a small fireball at Barry. Ducking to the side, Barry began rapidly running in a circle around Tempus, keeping his speed just low enough that Tempus could try and attack him while putting on another burst of speed at the last second to stay ahead of it. After a few seconds of this, Barry changed tactics and dived to the ground to avoid Tempus's subsequent attack, but then had to keep rolling when he realised that Rory had just fired a flamethrower blast at a demon close to him, only to find himself struck by another flame blast that came dangerously close to scorching his back.

Barry had no idea how his demonic opponent had pulled it off, but Tempest had somehow managed to hit him while he was in motion, something that very few of Barry's opponents had managed to pull off. Frankly, he wasn't sure if even Zoom or Thawne could have hit him at that distance; most of the time he'd only taken a punch from those guys because he was grappling with them directly after they'd stopped trying to chase each other around the area…

Shifting his mind to a faster speed, the Flash took a quick assessment of the battlefield to plan his next move before he charged towards Tempus again. As the demon lashed out with another swipe of its scythes, Barry put on an extra burst of speed and leapt into the air, dodging the worst of the blow and vibrating himself in the process. Before Tempus could adjust his attack, Barry shifted his motion and dived towards the demon, adjusting his vibrational frequency so that he had enough physical presence to force his opponent down while also partially entering the demon's body. The combined force of the impact and the pain of the vibration did just enough damage to force Tempus to the ground, leaving Barry free to pursue his next plan.

 _Tempus can probably still be beaten the old-fashioned way if I take more time, but if what Oliver told me about his experience with Constantine is right, it can't hurt to at least_ try _this…_

His mind made up, Barry ran for Constantine and placed his hands on the other man's shoulders, shifting his focus just enough to pass a brief burst of Speed Force energy into the exorcist.

"What the bloody hell-?" Constantine said once he realised something had changed.

"This is what I call 'Flashtime'," Barry explained urgently. "It'll only take a second or so for the outside world, but from your perspective, you're experiencing the world at the same rate as I do when I'm using my speed for a few minutes, so I need you to confirm a couple of things about Buzz and then give me a quick crash-course…"

* * *

Even after fighting alongside Barry against the Dominators and the invasion from Earth-X, or those few brief weeks Wally had spent on the team during and after the final battle with Mallus, Sara wasn't sure she'd ever get entirely used to seeing what a speedster could do if they really had a chance to let loose. Even with her own demonic opponents taking up most of her attention, she'd managed to see him exchanging blows all over the battlefield with that 'Tempus' thing, the pale figure presenting a sharp contrast with Barry's distinctive red suit, before Tempus fell to the ground and Barry moved over to grab Constantine.  
  
Sara had no idea what Barry was doing with the exorcist, but it seemed like it had been only a couple of seconds before the speedster released his grip on the other man and moved on to move rapidly around Buzz where the demon had been watching the battle off to the side. Sara wasn't sure where Barry had found those items, but in a matter of seconds he had assembled a small ring of candles around Buzz. Sara heard what she could only describe as a strange hum from Barry's direction before Buzz's body began to twitch, as though he was fighting to keep something contained inside his body.  
  
Sara hadn't ever given it much thought to what it was like for Barry when he was operating at top speed, but if she wasn't hearing him performing an exorcism at superspeed, she'd be very surprised.  
  
"You can't _fucking_ -!" Buzz began, only for a quick blur from Barry to knock Buzz back, the demon stunned into silence even as the speedster apparently continued the ritual without a break. None of the other Legends had time to say anything more before Barry apparently completed the ritual, stepping back with a solemn nod as Buzz let out a strangled scream and slammed his hands over his mouth, as though trying to keep something down.  
  
"Super-speed exorcism," Constantine explained with a slight grin, as Sara and Lexa gathered near him.  
  
"…That's an option?" Sara looked at Constantine, still surprised to have her theory confirmed. "For _any_ of these guys?"  
  
"Not for most of these suckers, as the look makes it clear they're all up here in their own bodies, but when we're dealing with a demon that looks that human even when the rest look this twisted, they're up here hitching a ride and can be sent back down if you know what you're doin'."  
  
"The Flash can perform exorcisms?" Lexa asked incredulously.  
  
"Warlock gave me a quick crash course," Barry explained as he suddenly came up beside them.  
  
"How quick?" Lexa asked.  
  
"I took it in via speed-learning," Barry shrugged. "Not sure how long I'll retain the facts, but it was enough to do that-"  
  
Buzz finally let out an agonised roar as his hands left his mouth, releasing a burst of what Sara could only think of as dark light before his face suddenly developed red skin and small lumps in place of his hair that put her in mind of the feelers she'd seen on enlarged photos of bugs. Sara raised her weapons to prepare for a new fight before Buzz's body fell to the ground and vanished in the same burst of dark light. The nearby demons reeled back as though the 'explosion' of Buzz's apparent death, and Sara was surprised to see that the nearest ones had suddenly developed marks on the skin facing the blast that she could almost compare to burns.  
  
The most noticeable detail about the blast, however, was that the flames surrounding the apparent angel flared brighter, as though they were somehow responding to whatever Barry had done to Buzz. On the other side of the cavern that had become their battlefield, the large cat-thing that Buzz had identified as Chakat reeled back in pain, clutching at its eyes as though trying to protect its vision from the dark flare.  
  
Seizing the opportunity, Ray jammed his hand into the thing's mouth and made his fist grow, withdrawing it in disgust as he looked at the splattered remains of Chakat's shattered head as the cat-demon's body fell to the ground from his hand. Tempus used the brief distraction to launch a powerful tornado towards the Atom, but Barry ran in between Ray and Tempus and cut that blast off with two of his own tornados.  
  
The pale-skinned demon was briefly completely focused on trying to overpower Barry's own counter-attack, which left it open for Lexa to pull out her gun and fire a bullet directly into the middle of the thing's head. As the demon fell to the ground with an agonised screech that seemed like nothing a human being could have made, the remaining minions turned to look at the source of the sound, only to be caught in a blast of fire that reminded Sara of Mick's gun, except that the heat went beyond anything Sara had witnessed from that weapon before now. Turning around, she saw that Mick had managed to align the gun so that its flames passed through the edge of the flaming circle around the still-trapped form that was once Linda Danvers, the two flames mixing together to create a potent fire-blast. A brief golden crackle was the only clue that Barry had stepped in just in time to get the rest of the team out of harm's way before the fire blast hit them, but that was enough to assure Sara that the situation was still under control.  
  
"OK," she said, taking a tentative look around the cavern before she turned to study the rest of the team. "That… seems to be everything, right?"  
  
"Even Tempus?" Barry looked at the pale-skinned demon in surprise.  
  
"Bullet to the brain takes down most things if it's direct enough," Constantine shrugged. "Just got to remember that most of these suckers were more of a known threat, and we don't always have the right weapons to do the kind of damage that'd put 'em down that easily-"  
  
"But what about Linda?"  
  
Turning to look at the figure still trapped in the circle, Sara had to remind herself that the main reason they'd come here in the first place was still a problem; how were they going to deal with an actual angel?


	9. Into the Mind of an Angel

"So… how do we do this?" Ray looked uncertainly at the young woman in the middle of the flaming circle, the fallen demons forgotten in favour of the immediate problem. "Dump a bucket of water on her?"

"This is a trapped angel; we can't just wake her up and hope everything's in order," Constantine said, shaking his head in exasperation. "We don't do this properly, she's liable to just blow up because that body's not ready for her-"

"That 'body' is my _sister_ -" Lexa began as she stared angrily at the exorcist.

"Which is what we need," Barry said, eyes widening in inspiration. "We can't wake up the angel; we have to get through to _Linda_."

"Linda?" Mick looked inquiringly at his former foe-turned-occasional ally. "The screwed-up Satanist-"

"That's my _sister_ ," Lexa cut the arsonist off with a cool glare. "She made mistakes, but she's not a _Satanist_."

"…Check," Mick said, rubbing his cheek where he had just been slapped, even as he looked at the young police officer with a new air of respect.

" _Getting back to my point_ ," Barry cut in as he looked around at the group, "from what Constantine's told us, we're all fairly sure that this angel… I'm not sure if 'possessed' is the right term here, but it's using Linda's body to act while it's on Earth, right?"

"Right," Sara nodded even as she looked questioningly at Barry. "So… what are you thinking?"

"I get that I'm not exactly the expert on all things supernatural here, but if it's using Linda's body, there has to be _something_ of her personality left in there, right?"

"Well… like I said, there's precedent for angels on this level bonding to humans to get perspective," Constantine conceded, looking at Barry with a thoughtful smile.

"Right, so… if we can get through to _Linda_ somehow, maybe we can help her… talk to the angel?" Barry shrugged. "I mean, I know it's not the same thing, but I helped a meta with a split personality and magnetic abilities get some control over her other self a couple of years back before her other side killed her abusive father; could we do something similar here?"

"Maybe…" Constantine nodded thoughtfully. "You might be onto something there, Allen; right now this angel's basically in a raw state… if we can get through the current chaos going on in there, maybe we can help Linda talk with it…"

"You mean… if we do something like that… Restitutionum thing you used to save me?" Sara looked at Constantine with a new sense of hope.

"Good call," Constantine nodded at Sara before he turned back to the flaming circle. "And with all this already going on, it's actually a bit easier to set up another one of those than it was back then…"

"Cliff notes, please?" Rory raised the hand with his heat-gun in it. "What the Hell is a… Restitutionum?"

"It's like a… reverse-exorcism," Sara explained, as Constantine began to scrawl a series of sigils around the flaming the circle. "A couple of years back, I went through a… spiritually traumatic experience… and Warlock helped a few people close to me bring me back to myself by drawing my soul back to my body."

"Reverse exorcism?" Lexa asked uncertainly.

"Instead of trying to banish something _from_ Linda, we'll be projecting ourselves _into_ her to help her find herself on a spiritual level. Don't ask me how it works, but-"

"We're ready," Constantine stood up and looked at the rest of the group. "Now then, I'm going to have to stay out here to keep the link steady, but I can send three of you in there to try and get Linda and her new co-pilot to work something out that'll let them both cool down…"

"I'll do it," Sara, Barry, Lexa and Ray said at once. After a brief moment as the four of them exchanged glances with each other, Ray shrugged and moved over to take up a semi-defensive stand alongside Rory.

"Guess we're on guard duty if anyone else shows up?" the former CEO glanced over at Constantine.

"Can't hurt; this kinda thing could get choppy," the exorcist nodded before looking back at the three. "Just remember; I can't let you out of this until you've found straightened things out in there, or there's no way of knowing what we'll drag out."

"What we could… drag out?" Sara repeated in confusion.

"At this point that angel's a burning mass of power who's still struggling to work out if it even wants to take control of Linda; I stick you all in there, you'll be exposed to that same raw power," Constantine explained grimly. "You're safe enough if you can wake that winged sucker up on your own so she chooses to let you out, but if you try and duck out without straightening things out in there, you could come out with fragments of that power that you can't handle and then… you don't want to know."

"Uh… I get that this is probably a stupid question, but is this anything like how in _Supernatural_ angels would basically make humans blow up if they tried to inhabit someone as a vessel who wasn't suited for the role?" Sara asked.

"Actually… from what I've heard about that show, that's probably a good analogy," Constantine nodded at his team's leader before looking over at Barry and Lexa. "So, you up for it?"

"She's my sister," Lexa said firmly.

"We're here," Barry shrugged with a brief smile. "Let's go."

"Right then," Constantine said, directing Sara, Lexa and Barry to take up position around the flaming circle before he held out his hands and began to chant. " _Pelako ameso yobe eleggua, imbone ukuchila panshita. De domino vestro, aliquis._ _Et stabit de domino vestro._ _Audite vocem meam._ _Ancor, anchor, candones helosi_ _,_ _et vos eleutis phugori..._ _De cruinne-ce agus akasha_ _,_ _seall me do solas_!"

There was a brilliant burst of white light, and then it seemed to Barry as though everything around him except for Sara and Lexa had vanished-

* * *

_-Linda was accepting an award on stage-_   
  
_-A bloodstained rug was being carried out of a house as Linda watched in horror-_   
  
_-Linda was talking with Buzz under a tree as a bald man with a dark beard made a speech on a podium further down the field-_   
  
_-Linda was being led into a house that looked like something out of a BDSM party-_   
  
_-Linda was arguing with her parents about something; something was heard about them wishing she'd never been born-_   
  
_-Linda was watching as a woman bled out in front of her, Buzz standing to the side with the bloody knife in his hands-_   
  
_-Buzz basically gutted a familiar bearded man as Linda watched with a satisfied grin-_

* * *

Once the final burst of white light faded from his retinas, Barry wasn't entire surprised to find himself standing in what looked like the warehouse they'd initially traced Linda to, albeit with holes in the walls and shattered boxes around it that gave the impression that there'd been some kind of explosion here. Glancing over he saw that Sara and Lexa were standing alongside him, Sara still in her White Canary outfit while Lexa's police uniform now included a bulletproof vest and additional weapons.  
  
"Is this… where it happened?" Lexa asked, her eyes drawn to the familiar circular design scrawled onto the ground.  
  
"Probably," Barry conceded. "I mean, I won't pretend to know how Linda ended up in that cave, but from what we worked out earlier, this is where she was-"  
  
He was interrupted mid-explanation when there was a sudden flash of what he could only describe as 'dark light', which shifted to reveal that the warehouse was now 'occupied' by a small group wearing long dark robes that Barry could only think of as a cult, a symbol on their heads in the form of a circle with a triangle inside it and a dot in the centre. Barry's attention was briefly drawn to the rift in the air, the energy around it resembling a breach but in a clearly triangular shape rather than the relatively rough nature of the breach, before he saw the brunette who was the only person in this place in normal clothes, screaming in the centre of the robed figures.  
  
" _Linda_!" Lexa yelled, as she saw a knife slammed into her sister's back, before a golden light emerged from the portal behind her and entered the young woman's body, throwing her off the blade and to the ground.  
  
"You think that was-?" Barry began as the robed figures began to move away.  
  
"The moment the angel entered her?" Sara finished, looking around as everyone else in the warehouse suddenly froze. "Yeah, I think so… Lexa, wait-!"  
  
When Lexa's fingers touched the fallen form of her sister, there was a sudden golden flare from the fallen girl-

* * *

_-A prison of flesh and blood and bone-_   
  
_-Suffocating in a limited universe of five senses-_   
  
_-Sound so basic, vision only able to see a fragment of what they were used to-_   
  
_-All the bacteria and disease each human carried around with them-_   
  
_-_ _**Why do they endure this pain?** _ _-_

* * *

"GET OUT!" a voice screamed from all around them, as the three found themselves back in the warehouse, now empty apart from the wreckage Barry and the others had found in their first visit.  
  
" _No_!" Barry yelled, grabbing Lexa and Sara's arms as he stared in the direction of the voice; he didn't know if he could actually do anything in this situation, but as the only metahuman present he felt that he was at least better equipped to cope with what he was facing. "We're here to help-"  
  
" _Help_?" the voice yelled, sounding like it was on the verge of laughing at the idea. "Nobody can help; I've damned myself! All this pain and suffering and frustration and despair and rage… how can you _cope_ like this? Why should humans have to-?"  
  
"Because it's not all about that!" Lexa protested, looking desperately around herself as though seeking someone to talk to. "I get that it must seem like we're all about hurting each other, but we're… there's more to us than pain!"  
  
"When I was drawn to this world because a few pitiful demons convinced a group of humans that sacrificing one of your own would give them power?" the voice- _the_ _ **angel**_ , Barry realised with apprehensive awe- said, rage and contempt in her voice. "I was just trying to help, and now I've damned myself to this chaotic mess… trapped in a limited sack of flesh and fluid that has nothing but chaos and pain, even with such limited senses-"  
  
"You just need time to get used to it-!"  
  
"And why should I do that?" the angel yelled indignantly. "So many primitive urges and the constant pains of the flesh-"  
  
"Like Lexa said, it's not always like that!" Barry protested. "I'm not saying that we're perfect-"  
  
"' _Perfect_ '?" the angel repeated mockingly. "When the man you consider a hero tortures others for his own ends? When his closest friend has betrayed him time and again? When the woman he loves has gone against his plans over and over? When the man you believed was your mentor was your greatest enemy and you yourself have been deceived and betrayed by-"  
  
"Oh yeah, because everyone deserves to be judged by the times that they screwed up!" Barry cut the voice off, deciding not to question how the angel knew all that in favour of focusing on defending the human race. "I'm not saying that it's always easy, but the whole point of life is that things aren't just black and white! Oliver's a hero because he's learned to move _beyond_ his some of the darker things he's had to do, he and Digg are brothers because they can forgive each other when they disagree, Felicity and Oliver work because they give each other a different perspective, and every time someone on my team's made a decision I didn't agree with…"  
  
He shook his head in exasperation. "Look, I'm trying to appreciate that it's probably harder to see how we all make it work from your perspective, but the whole point of relationships is that we accept the flaws and take people as they are, not define them by one or the other!"  
  
"If humanity must exist in such a state-!"  
  
"They don't," Lexa said, now staring resolutely in what Barry hoped was the direction of this strange voice. "From what I've heard, the Flash has probably seen some of the best that humanity has to offer, but there are smaller acts of kindness to be found every day. Some local shop-owners trust people enough not to pay them immediately because they know the other will pay them later, a robber can give up his chance to escape to help his intended target after the old man had a heart attack, even some killers aren't so far gone that they'll just kill _anyone_ …"  
  
She shook her head and looked up with a smile. "I'm not going to say it's always straightforward to know who's who, but you can't just assume the worst of humanity because you feel like that's all there is."  
  
"Lexa's right," Barry put in, hoping that the policewoman wouldn't mind him using her name this casually. "Life is hard, and there's always going to be moments where people basically fight even with their closest friends, but what's important is what we do in the end. Maybe the world isn't always fair, and maybe people do end up hurting each other more than they help… but that's why people like White Canary and I do what we do."  
  
"What do you mean?" the angel's voice said, now sounding tentatively curious rather than outright hostile.  
  
"It's like a show I used to watch said," Barry continued, hoping that this message still worked for something this relatively alien to humanity. "People like us try to act as though the world is the way it _should_ be… because if we can live like that and help enough people, maybe someday it _will_ be that way."  
  
"Ba- the _Flash_ is right," Sara said, stepping forward to stand beside him, looking upwards in what at least seemed to be the direction of the voice. "One of the best men we know failed to prevent the deaths of over five hundred people, but the only person who truly judged him for failing was himself. People may have used him as a symbol of how the disaster was allowed to happen, but everyone who knows him directly knows that he did everything he could with the facts at hand to prevent that death, and _that_ is what we use to judge him."  
  
"You… you truly believe this?" the angel's voice said, the previous tentative curiosity now sounding almost pleading, as though she genuinely wanted to be told that she was wrong.  
  
"We do," Barry affirmed, briefly surprised to find himself taking Sara's hand as they looked up at the angel in solidarity. "The world is flawed, but there are people out there who _want_ to make it better… and just because someone stumbles doesn't mean they're a failure."  
  
Silence fell in the mental void as the trio waited patiently for a response, and then the angel seemed to chuckle.  
  
"All that pain…" she said, an edge of grim amusement in her voice that Barry wasn't sure how to interpret. "But I can help it… I _see_ how I can help it…"  
  
Barry didn't have time to ask what the angel meant by that last comment before he, Sara and Lexa were forced to their knees, each clutching their heads; Barry felt like someone had opened up his skull to take a look at his brain, and he could only imagine the two women were feeling something similar…  
  
 _There_.

* * *

"What the-?" Lexa's voice broke into Barry's confused mind, prompting him to realise that he was back in the real world, sprawled on his back on the floor of the cave. Scrambling to his feet, Barry glanced around to confirm that Sara and Lexa were all right, but then turned around to find that Ray, Rory and Constantine were now fighting with a new wave of demons, this group putting Barry in mind of overgrown, misshapen insects rather than anything humanoid. He moved quickly to help Sara and Lexa to their feet, but before any of them could do more than assume a battle stance, a strange wave of blue energy burst from behind them to wash over the attacking demons. In a matter of moments, the assembled demons had either fallen down or outright vanished from the cave, leaving only a few staggering remnants who were swiftly taken down by Ray's photon blasts.  
  
"Huh," Rory looked at the remaining fallen demons in surprise, before he turned back to look at the others and his eyes widened even further. Barry was about to ask what he was looking at when he turned around and found himself looking at something he definitely hadn't been expecting to see.  
  
The suit was a more vivid shade of blue than he was familiar with, the skirt seemed to be a bit longer, and her cape looked like it was curled around over something, but for the most part, the woman that had previously been Linda Danvers _definitely_ looked like Supergirl.  
  
"I choose to see the best in them," the figure said solemnly, before she indicated her body with a slight smile at Barry and Sara. "And this represents what you think of when you picture the best of mankind."  
  
"Uh… I thought Supergirl-" Ray began.  
  
"Supergirl is the most human and compassionate being I've ever met; her origin doesn't change that," Barry said firmly, before he looked back at the apparent angel. "So… are you Linda, or… I'm sorry if this is blunt, but are you the angel?"  
  
"I am both," the figure replied.  
  
Looking over at Lexa as she stared shakily at the figure in blue, Barry hoped that the angel could give them a better answer to that once they got out of this cave.


	10. Meeting Supergirl

"So… Linda's still in there?" Lexa looked awkwardly at the Supergirl doppelganger sitting patiently in the _Waverider_ medical wing, the rest of the Legends gathered around her. They had managed to exorcise the spirit of Silver Banshee from her current host once they had returned to the cave entrance, as well as erasing the woman's memory of the experience, but that still left them with the question of what to do about the angel that now looked like Supergirl.

" _Essentially yes_ ," Gideon's voice reported as the ship concluded its scan of the apparent second Supergirl. " _Analysis confirms that her DNA has been altered, but scans of her current brain patterns confirms that there are two forms of consciousness present in her mind, one of them basically dormant and the other adjusting as time goes on_."

"Adjusting?" Zari repeated curiously. "What are you saying here?"

"It's just… I know I'm Linda, and I know you're my sister, but at the same time I… I feel _detached_ from that," the angel explained as she looked at Lexa. "I don't have any real memories of being anything else, but it's just… there's a certain distance from Linda's memories at the same time…"

"What does that mean?" Lexa looked at the woman before she turned to Constantine. "Are you… is this some sick _thing_ where an angel's using my sister's memories-?"

"Your sister's soul is still in there, luv; it's just going through a bit of a tricky process where it's trying to work out where Linda Danvers ends and the angel riding shotgun begins," Constantine held up his hands in a calming gesture. "Soul's basically in the driving-seat, but the angel's still in there somewhere; it's just had to filter itself down to a lower level of consciousness so it doesn't basically drive Linda nuts."

"He… he's right," 'Supergirl' nodded tentatively at Lexa. "I can think about my life with you, and I can think about… what the angel _feels_ about all this… but I don't feel like I'm the angel _myself_ …"

"And what happens when that all… straightens out in her head?" Lexa asked.

"Hard to say," Constantine shrugged. "Been a long time since an angel settled into a human body like this; last few I ran into took this form themselves, but this one got shoved in there without a choice-"

"She does… _want_ to be here now," the Supergirl-lookalike cut in, looking urgently up at the exorcist. "However she ended up here, she… she accepts that Earth is where she is now, and she wants to stay."

"I can appreciate that, but doesn't change the fact that she didn't choose to be here in the first place, and that's before we start taking into account where she came from," Constantine continued. "She's obviously not one of the 'kill everyone' prisoners or we'd all be dead already, but the fact is that she's had to compress herself down into your body or risk blowing up everything around her; she's pretty much existing here in a very delicate balance that could get thrown off any moment if either of you really start 'fighting' about who's who."

"Ah," Linda and Lexa said at once.

"Regarding the mind-meld thing, best thing I can suggest is let it happen and try and keep track of your mental state," Constantine said with a shrug. "Not much else to do now that you're hanging out together but let this all play out."

"Talking of things 'playing out'…" Sara put in tentatively, "I mean, from what we've seen of shapeshifters, I feel _kind_ of safe assuming that the angel's changed its appearance like this to make it easier for it to tap its powers, but why would an angel decide to look like Supergirl?"

"It's like… the angel's true appearance would never be able to exist on this plane of existence, so she… I… we've basically tapped into this form so that we can manifest at least some of the angel's abilities," the angel/Linda explained, before she looked over at Barry and Sara with a thoughtful smile. "When we were talking about heroism, you both thought very keenly about this person as someone who represented… the best way I can describe it is that she represents an _ideal_ to you… so I chose this form to manifest in when tapping my abilities."

"This form?" Lexa looked at the angel with renewed curiosity. "Does that mean…?"

Looking over at Lexa, the angel smiled and shook her head, her hair flying around her face as it changed from blonde to brunette, her face changing from the variation of Supergirl to a form that they recognised from the 'Missing Person' photos that had initially drawn their attention.

"Hi," Linda smiled at her sister.

"Linda…?" Lexa whispered, before she walked up and wrapped her arms around her sister, sobbing into her shoulder for a few moment as Linda held her in turn. The Legends and the Flash just looked awkwardly at each other as the Danvers sisters held each other, feeling like they were intruding on something private even if they didn't feel like this was a good time to leave, until the sisters stepped back from each other.

"So… you're all right?" Lexa asked.

"…Sort of," Linda said, raising one hand and waving it in a dismissive manner.

"What was-?" Mick began before Linda turned back into her 'Supergirl' appearance and sent him flying back into a wall with a wave of her hand.

"A demonstration," 'Linda' explained as she looked at her sister. "I can use my abilities in this form only, and I _have_ to assume it at times or… well, I'll explode because the energy will build up inside me."

"You said that would-?" Lexa began as she turned to Constantine.

"This isn't your standard angelic manifestation, luv; the rules are complicated," Constantine cut her off. "Your sister was definitely a suitable host for an angel, but could be this angel was packing a bit more 'oomph' than anyone was expecting; the shapeshifting bit's probably just a good way to help her control it without just overwhelming Linda's identity."

"That… seems to make sense," Sara nodded as she exchanged nods with Barry.

"Even the part about why she looks like Skirt?" Mick put in.

"Even that," Sara said, shaking her head wistfully at Rory's old nickname. "I mean, I get that we haven't worked with her that often, but Supergirl… she's just _good_."

"That's what makes her a true hero," Barry smiled. "She and her cousin… they're the best people I know."

"Supergirl has a cousin?" Lexa looked at Barry in surprise.

"Yeah…" Barry said, before he looked around the medical room with a thoughtful smile. "Actually… give me a moment?"

Before any of the others could say anything, the Flash vanished from the medical wing with a burst of lightning.

"Does he… often do that?" Lexa asked.

"He's a bit impulsive at times, but he means well," Sara shrugged with a smile. "Of course, I've heard that Spartan has never been able to get used to him just showing up and dragging him away when something comes up…"

"Spartan?" Lexa asked uncertainly.

"One of Green Arrow's team," Sara clarified. "The Flash doesn't do it often, but sometimes he has to give Spartan a lift when they need his contacts-"

The conversation abruptly ended when the Flash reappeared in the medical wing, now accompanied by an unexpected new arrival.

"Whoa…" Supergirl said, eyes wide as she took in the figure sitting on the medical bed. "I mean, the Flash told me what to expect, but it's still something to _see_ it."

"Su… Supergirl?" Lexa looked between the new arrival and her sister in incredulity, before her gaze settled on the new arrival. "You… what are you doing here?"

"The Flash got in touch with me and explained some of the situation," Supergirl smiled over at Lexa, even as she still shot the occasional incredulous glance at Linda as she sat on the bed.

"This quickly?" Linda asked uncertainly.

"Flashtime," Barry explained. "I can grant other people a degree of my own superspeed for a few moments at a time; I used it to tell Supergirl everything we've been through in the last few hours and ask her to come along to talk with you."

"Oh," Linda said, looking at her unintended 'template' with a tentative smile. "Uh… nice to meet you?"

"The same," Supergirl smiled back at her double before she adopted a more curious expression. "So, out of curiosity, what did the Flash tell you about me?"

"Apart from the fact that he's worked with you a few times in the past?" Lexa replied uncertainly. "Well… that's pretty much it."

"Right…" Supergirl said, taking a deep breath before she looked over at the Legends. "Look, I appreciate that you've helped Linda get here, but could you… give us a moment?"

"…Check," Sara nodded, looking around the room and indicating the door with a tentative yet firm nod. With that cue, the Flash and the rest of the Legends walked out of the medical room, leaving the two Supergirls and Lexa to look awkwardly at each other.

"OK," Supergirl said as he looked at her doppelganger, "this is going to be complicated to explain, but considering that you've basically become _me_ , I think you need the full picture."

"What full picture?" Lexa asked.

"About where I came from."

"Where you come from?" Linda/the angel repeated curiously.

"I'm from a parallel universe."

"A what?" the two girls repeated in confusion.

"The way it was explained to me was that there are multiple different versions of Earth, existing at different vibrational frequencies from each other, where history diverged from the one you know in some way or other."

"Like… Kennedy isn't killed or the Nazis won the Second World- oh," Lexa said, as she realised the implications of her own words. "That's where those Nazis came from last year, isn't it?"

"From the parallel world known as Earth-X," Supergirl nodded. "This world is known as Earth-1… and I come from Earth-38."

"Earth-38?" Linda repeated curiously. "You're from a parallel universe?"

"And another planet."

The medical bay fell silent for a few moments after that last sentence.

"You're an _alien_?" Lexa looked at Supergirl in shock.

"One of the last of my kind," Supergirl replied with a solemn nod. "Back on my Earth, I help defend my city and my world from everything from standard criminals to hostile aliens, but I met the Flash a few years ago when he accidentally crossed the dimensional barriers into my world, and since then we've kept in touch if something comes up that requires one of us to help the other."

"What does this have to do with-?"

"You're my sister."

"I… I'm _what_?" Lexa looked at Supergirl incredulously.

"Back in my world, I came to Earth when I was in my early teens, and… long story short, I was adopted by the Danvers family, with Alex Danvers becoming my adopted sister," Supergirl continued. "For some reason your parents have different names and careers from my parents, but your counterpart on my world… well, that's actually how the Flash found out about this; Alex Danvers is an agent of the DEO just like you're a cop."

"DEO?" Linda asked.

"Department of Extranormal Operations," Supergirl shrugged. "They deal with alien incursions on my world."

"OK," Lexa nodded tentatively. "So… the Flash was here because he met… the 'me' on your world?"

"That's what drew the Flash's attention here, but the Legends were tracking Buzz's activities already," Supergirl explained, before she shook her head and looked at Linda. "Anyway, the main reason I'm here is that I wanted to ask; what do you want to do now?"

"What do…?" Linda repeated uncertainly.

"I mean, I appreciate that you didn't just choose to look like me, and I'm not saying that you have to do anything you don't want to do, but if you're going to have these powers now… what are you going to do with them?"

"The chaos flow."

"The… the what?" Linda looked at Lexa in confusion.

"That… Warlock guy said that the angel being summoned here like that would basically turn Leesburg into what he called a 'chaos flow'," Lexa explained. "If Leesburg has become some kind of supernatural magnet… well, it's going to need someone to defend it, right?"

"You… you really think…?" Linda looked at her sister in surprise. "You were in my memory, Lexa; you _saw_ what I did with Buzz and his crew-!"

"You watched them do it; that's not the same as-"

"Just because I didn't take direct part in any of their crimes doesn't mean that I'm any better than them-!"

"But you can be," Lexa smiled encouragingly at the other Supergirl, reaching over to take her sister's hand and give it a reassuring squeeze. "From what I've heard, we're going to have other supernatural creatures coming to Leesburg until that chaos flow thing's run its course; if you've got these powers already…"

Linda looked uncertainly at her sister for a moment, before she turned to look curiously at Supergirl.

"Would you… be OK with that?" she asked, shame and uncertainty in her voice. "I mean, I know I've… made a few mistakes-"

"Name one person who _hasn't_ made a mistake in their life?" Supergirl smiled at her reassuringly. "I get that you've had a rough path to get here, but if your sister thinks you can do this… well, let's just say that I've learned the hard way that Alexandra Danvers always knows what to do in a tight spot, even if she accepts that other people may not like it."

"Is that-?"

"It's a good thing," Supergirl nodded at Lexa before looking back at her doppelganger. "Stick with her, and I think you'll be all right."

Linda's nod of agreement was tentative, but the cautious smile on her face made it clear that she appreciated the faith the other woman was showing in her.

"So…" she said, indicating her costume as her smile grew more eager. "Does that mean-?"

"Consider yourself the Supergirl of Earth-1, Linda Danvers," Supergirl replied, holding out her hand for a shake. "Call the Flash if you need anything, but from what I can see, you've already got a good support system in play."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, hope everyone appreciated that resolution, but don't think that's everything; considering what this universe would face within a year, it didn't feel right to ignore _that_ issue…


	11. Epilogue: After the Crisis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1: Jumping ahead a few months, this is basically set a few days after the resolution of the Crisis, including the final defeat of the Anti-Monitor and Oliver's funeral; hope you all like it.

As far as Barry was concerned, the only reason this hadn't been one of his first priorities after he realised that he and Kara shared the same Earth was that there'd been so many other things he'd had to deal with more immediately. Confirming that Oliver was dead and he still had to stop the Anti-Monitor from destroying everything had been the most obvious priorities they had to deal with, but once the Anti-Monitor had been defeated, Barry had made it a particular point to look up most of his old allies to determine how they were doing in this new world.

It had been a relief to confirm that Stein's family were all still the way they'd been before the Crisis, and it had been a strange comfort to know that Julian Albert still existed even if Barry would never entirely like the guy. Jax and the Hawks were still living their lives after their official 'retirement' from the vigilante business, Lisa Snart was making an interesting living as a security consultant who tested the systems she was hired to examine directly, Oliver's old teammate Ragman was back in action in his own home town, Tina McGee maintained a research facility in another city, Patty was still doing fine in her new job, Linda Park was living her life with no sign that she'd ever been Doctor Light…

Still, as much as he'd told himself he just wanted to be sure that the people he'd known longer were all right, Barry knew the real reason that he'd saved Linda Danvers for last; when he knew for a fact that Kara's family had come through the Crisis intact, he didn't want to have to face the idea that someone he'd helped save was gone forever because he hadn't told Oliver about her. He still wasn't sure how much control Oliver had been able to exert when he'd recreated Earth, as most of Oliver's dead friends and family coming back to life could have been a subconscious wish rather than a controlled plan, but when Oliver had never even _met_ Linda even if he and Kara had told the archer about her…

Frankly, Barry had never been sure about spending time with Linda himself, but how much of that was just because he couldn't stop himself seeing her as 'not-Kara'? He'd given Linda a phone she could use to call the team if she needed any help, but had he truly given her the impression that he'd answer that call if she made it, when he, the Legends and Kara had basically left Linda alone after the cult had been dealt with?

It wasn't like they had done nothing to help Linda beyond Kara giving her permission to use her image in her new state. Once Lexa and Linda had agreed to keep the existence of the Legends secret, Sara and Barry had taken Linda back to her parents, claiming that the cult that had abducted her had also subjected Linda to a harsh drug treatment to try and brainwash her into becoming a member, which had given Linda an excuse not to talk about what she'd been through as she could claim she didn't remember. Constantine had left her with a couple of supernatural contacts she could consult if she had any questions about things she might encounter while defending Leesburg, but for the most part Barry had kept an eye on news from the city and been satisfied that Linda could handle herself well enough. Lexa had also cropped up in the news a couple of times, but even those reports were mostly just linking her to some of Supergirl's cases, such as that report about the time the Leesburg police had managed to capture Kyle Nimbus when he'd finally resurfaced.

Right now, as he moved briskly through the small town, fast enough to take in everything while not so fast that he'd leave traces that might leave people wondering what the Flash was doing here in the first place, Barry finally found what had to be Linda, but he was surprised to see the changes. From his position watching her at the top of a building, he could see that Linda still looked a bit like Kara when she was in action, but her outfit had gone from Supergirl's blue top and red skirt to a white T-shirt with the S-shield on it and tight blue shorts, although her long red cape still gave Barry that vague impression that there was something under it…

"She looks… well, right?"

"Kara?" Barry looked at his friend in surprise as Kara landed on the rooftop beside him. He still wasn't entirely used to the idea that Kara could just drop in on him this easily, even if they liked handling things the way they always had in their respective cities unless something big came up. "What are you doing here?"

"Same as you, I think," Kara shrugged, awkwardly indicating where Linda was currently tying up the last of the gang of crooks. "I got to thinking about Linda, and I just… wanted to see that she was OK."

"Yeah… same here," Barry nodded in agreement at his friend. "Do you… I mean, is she related to you now?"

"I think her dad's now some cousin of Jeremiah; Alex has mentioned that they visited us once or twice when I brought it up, but when one of you's a big-league scientist and the other's a small-town cop… I mean, it's not that they're _jealous_ of each other, but it kind of makes things difficult."

"Mmm," Barry acknowledged, recalling how weird it had sometime been finding ways to justify him interacting with Oliver; even after the first vigilante had lost most of his money, he still had enough of a reputation in Star City that it was hard to explain why he was hanging out with some CSI tech from a different city. "So… what do you want to do now? Do we tell her the truth?"

"Is it worth it?" Kara said, looking uncertainly at the girl who was now talking nonchalantly with a couple of police officers as others escorted the prisoners into a van.

"Well… doesn't she have the right to know-?"

"That I basically stole her life?"

"Hey, you didn't steal-"

"When the universe was rebuilt, _I'm_ the one who got Alex," Kara said, shame on her face as she looked sadly at the girl in the makeshift suit, already flying off to another part of Leesburg. "OK, so Linda still has her parents, but she gets to deal with the mystical entities and all kinds of super-crooks passing through her town until that chaos flow's run its course, and I get the sister who… always believed in us… who'd give everything to help us…"

"Hey," Barry said again, reaching over to give Kara a brief hug before he stepped back. "It's not your fault, OK? However Oliver rebuilt everything… he might have saved most of his family, but it's not like he knew about Linda and chose to let you have Alex and leave Linda on her own. Believe me, I still find myself looking at Nash and wishing he was Harry or H.R. or Sherloque, but we've got to just… accept the way things played out and be grateful _any_ of us got out of that Crisis with any part of our lives intact."

"Yeah…" Kara nodded, her expression becoming solemn. Barry briefly wanted to kick himself when he remembered what Kara had told them about how her friend 'Brainy' had run into a few other versions of himself and almost had to kill one of them to stop the alternate trying to replace this Earth with his.

"Well," Kara said, sparing Barry from apologising as she gave him an understanding smile, "at least Linda seems happy now… and where's the point in telling what she's lost when we can't do anything to bring it back?"

"That's the problem of being… well, us," Barry smiled uncertainly. "We can learn so many incredible things about the universe, and we can't tell anyone about them because… well, seriously, who'd believe most of them? We can't bring back the way things were, so all we can do is just… let her live her life and hope she'll be OK."

"Yeah," Kara nodded, returning Barry's tentative smile with one of her own. "So… we just keep an eye on things here until we know if we're needed?"

"That's… probably the best bet," Barry nodded at her, looking at Leesburg with a thoughtful smile. "But hey, at least we know we've got back-up if we need it."

Kara's tentative smile at that comment made it clear that she knew Barry was just trying to make her feel better, but she at least appreciated the sentiment behind his comment.

Looking out at Leesburg, the two heroes exchanged another cautious smile with each other before they went off back towards their home cities. Leesburg's guardian angel had lost more than she knew, but if she could fight even ordinary crime and still wait to hand them over to the police, Supergirl and the Flash each had faith that the other Supergirl (or whatever she was calling herself) would cope with the challenges still facing her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2: Well, that's that for this series (unless something comes up in the show where I feel it would be appropriate for the others to call in Linda for help in her angelic capacity); after setting Linda up as a character, it just seemed appropriate to confirm that she wasn't erased from existence after the Crisis.


End file.
